Stephen’s work was sending him to Brazil for 10 days in February and since he’d be super busy, I couldn’t go with him (to where it was summer!). But my mom offered to buy me tickets to Delaware so that I could visit with them and they could see their grandkids.
I was scheduled to leave on February 2nd at 7:30am. However, a huge storm came through the midwest (24” in Chicago) and on the 1st my flight for the next day had been cancelled and I was rebooked on “the next flight”. But they had changed me from a direct flight into Philadelphia to having a layover in Detroit, so I went online to change this as 1) Detroit was another hub for the storm and I was pretty sure that flight would be cancelled as well and 2) I didn’t want my 2 1/2 hour plane ride to become an 8 hour event. Delta was letting you change your flight for free so I booked, what I thought was, the next direct flight. When I went to check-in that evening, however, it wouldn’t let me. I learned that the flight I had booked was indeed the “next” flight… but for the day BEFORE I was scheduled (originally) to fly and was actually a flight that took off an hour after I booked it. Lame. I was so mad. I managed to call customer service (and I wasn’t on hold too long) and explain the entire situation and the very nice agent put me on the direct flight that left at 2:20pm on the 2nd. Hooray!
So instead of getting up at like 5am (like originally planned) or at 7am (for the second flight), we had a nice long morning. The bags had been packed before I went to bed so we got up, ate breakfast, Clara took a morning nap and then Stephen came home at lunch time to take us to the airport. It was quite nice, actually. The airport wasn’t too crowded, but it’s still a task getting 2 small children through security. I also feel so inadequate, like the TSA staff is just passing judgment on me and assuming I don’t know anything. So between getting my barely standing but quickly crawling 11 month old out of the stroller, keeping track of my wandering 3 year old, and folding up our double stroller (which takes both hands) , I forgot to take our shoes off and the man just glared at me as he pointed to my shoes.
At the gate I gave the girls their lunches that I had packed the night before. Clara’s becoming a champ eater and was really mad at me when I took her out of the stroller since she was thoroughly enjoying her bowl of peas and string cheese. The plane ride went great. We didn’t have the ipod touch with us this trip like the last because Stephen had it for his trip (and it’s his… technically) but Samantha stayed completely content with her snacks, new coloring book, doll, and new squinkie toys. Clara pretty much ate the entire time.
Once we got to my folk’s house we settled in nicely to doing what we do best… hanging around the house. Samantha did a puzzle that Santa had brought for her to grandma’s house, Clara tried all sorts of new things (loves ham, clam chowder). We were trying to get Clara both weaned and walking before I came back to Minnesota; neither happened but great strides were made in both fields. We found that she likes Almond milk since “technically” she’s not suppose to have cow milk until she’s 1 (in 2 weeks). I just wanted to try stuff to see if she’ll actually take other liquids, so hooray! Her walking greatly improved and she loved pushing everything around.
We also discovered just how un-babyproofed my parent’s house is. It’s not terribly different from when Samantha was a baby. But Samantha was a very non-stereotypical baby. She just didn’t get into things, period. Clara is the opposite. You had to make sure the bathroom door was shut (or she’d be in the toilet, the toilet paper would be strewn about the entire house, both or a mixture), she kept finding paper on the floor and would rip it up. My poor dad didn’t know what he had agreed to when I left him with both girls and went to yoga with my mom. Granted he was working (on a conference call) and he knew Samantha was “playing” with the phone, he just didn’t know that someone was on the other end. Clara also learned how to crawl up the stairs, by herself (she appeared outside my bedroom door all of a sudden; fortunately she has a memory from when she fell down a flight of stairs on Christmas and so won’t go down anyway but in someone’s arms. She’ll actually feel for the step before she moved her weight forward, if her hand doesn’t touch she doesn’t proceed further), how to open the gas fireplace glass doors and get all the rocks out of the insert. And Samantha discovered that climbing the stairs on the outside of the banister isn’t the greatest of ideas.
Unfortunately my mom was sick for much of the time we were there (my 16 year old brother was also sick for part of the time) so we didn’t get out much. We did get to the Children’s Museum and made some Valentine’s Day sugar cookies. It was an enjoyable trip, but we were all happy to come home.
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