Leaving the house with an infant (Part II)

Random aside: does anyone else using blogger have issues with the font? I don't understand why my font's all over the place on some of my posts. It's not intentional, I promise. I didn't even touch the font the other day, so I have no idea why it fluctuated from old person's size to magnifying-glass-necessary size. Sorry, I'm not trying to make you question your vision. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, never mind. I caught it and reposted right away so you may or may not have seen the original post.

Second trip:

Two weeks ago. Had to go solo on this one but I figured with just the kid and one dog, it wouldn't be too bad. Bandit had a vet appointment in Santa Cruz, so I thought the DZ might enjoy a change of scenery. Afterwards, a friend and I made loose plans to possibly meet up for lunch. Right off the bad, I knew I was in trouble when after waking up by 5:30 - 6 every morning for weeks, the DZ decided to sleep in until 7. Usually, I'd love the extra sleep, but my plans had been centered around her waking up at her usual time. Because I figured she'd eat by 6 and then be ready for another meal by 9am or so. Giving me some time to get her fed and ready to go by 10. Which then gave me plenty of time to make the 11 am appointment. Sounds perfect right? Rookie Mistake # I have no idea: it never works that smoothly.

Some of you might be thinking, what's the big deal, so the kid decided to sleep in a little. And up until a few months ago, I probably would have agreed with you. Because honestly, who structures their plans around their kids' sleeping/eating schedule. If you gotta be somewhere, you gotta be there and the kid's going to have to deal. Well, I've been discovering these last few weeks what the big deal is. Because if she ate at 7, she's generally ready for her next meal right around 10, right when I'm supposed to be leaving for the vet's office. And I don't want a starving baby in the car.

I struggled with the decision of whether to wake her up. Because the other thing is that she loves car rides. If I could grab her still asleep and throw her into the car seat, there'd be a pretty good chance she'd stay asleep. If I chose to wake her up, I'd have to do it by about 9 or so to give me enough time to feed her and get her ready. But after waking up at 7, it was almost 8:30 by the time she went back to sleep. So, I went back and forth. There were probably a few emails to G in there wondering what I should do. Maybe some agonizing indecision expressed in a chat with a friend. You'd have thought I was debating a career path or a life or death situation the way I was agonizing.

Finally, I decided to let her sleep. Figured if I left right at 10, I'd be early for the vet anyway and could give her a quick bottle in the car just before the appointment. Except that she got up just as I was loading her in the carseat. And started wailing, but since I didn't have enough time to feed her before leaving, I figured I'd just throw her in the car and hoped for the best. The next big task was to get Bandit into the car. That was an even bigger chore, because these days, Bandit's pretty darn deaf and blind. She hides out under G's desk for much of the day, and convincing her to leave it even for fun stuff is a HUGE event. Because she has no idea what you're asking.

So I had the car seat in one hand and was trying to drag Bandit out from under the desk with another. The kid was bawling and Bandit was resisting so much that her collar almost came off in my hand. And I kept saying, "Come on, Bandit, let's go for a ride" because she likes rides. The problem with that though was that guess who else likes rides? Mia and Tucker who DID hear me just fine and were racing around the living room all ready to go. So then the trick became getting the DZ and Bandit out the door while keeping Mia and Tucker in. I can't express to you how much fun this all was. I finally went and got the kid's seat into the car and came back for Bandit. During which time I could hear the kid bawling in the garage all the way from the house.

Needless to say, I was NOT early for my vet appointment. The 45 minute drive over wasn't too bad except that every time I stopped for a light or gas or in any way slowed the car down, there'd be screaming from the backseat. I think the commotion made Bandit even more convinced that she was in for an ordeal. So then I was stuck instead trying to give the kid her bottle in the waiting room at the vet. By this point, the DZ had calmed down considerably and decided to sort of take her bottle but that she really preferred smiling and cooing at the vet's nurse instead. Which was great except that then she got hungry on our way back home and the car ride back was pretty much the same as the ride over. And I was so tired that I decided to just go home rather than meet my friend for lunch. Which was also great because I had left the house in such a rush that I hadn't eaten all morning. If there's one thing more fun than sitting in a car praying that the light would turn green so that the baby would stop crying, it's doing all of that starving. Just awesome.

Leaving the house with an infant (Part I)

First trip:

The little prima donna was about 5 weeks old. I needed to get out of the house, so G and I decided to take the baby and our 3 dogs to the beach. I guess most people start off with a trip to the local grocery store with JUST the baby or something like that. But where's the fun in that? And anyway, we had already done the obligatory trips to the pediatrician's office in town, so we figured we were ready for the big leagues. And it wasn't terrible. We fed the little DZ, changed her, burped her, and then got the car loaded up. It only took us about 45 minutes to get everything ready and in the car. Not bad, I thought, considering that getting ready included grabbing a bunch of stuff for the baby, trying to figure out how to fit everyone in my little car, and grabbing various throws, towels, and toys for the dogs. It wasn't until later that I found out that we had already been guilty of Rookie Mistake #1: Get every thing loaded up BEFORE the baby is fed and changed. Seeing as how she was eating every 3 hours at that point (or sooner), 45 minutes is just too much time to waste.

We were a bit worried about the dogs bugging the DZ in such close quarters, so G at the last minute found a torn down cardboard box in our garage to shield her a bit from their attention. Totally classy, right?

It seemed to do the trick though. Tucker was a bit curious at first but then he, like the others, settled down pretty quickly. Actually, they didn't seem to care about the baby much at all, even though she was impinging on their usual space, so I'm sure it would have been ok even without the box. And honestly, if they had wanted to get all up in her face, the cardboard wouldn't have done much good.

Once we got to the beach (45 minute drive), we realized that it might be a bit colder for the kid than we had realized (Rookie Mistake #2). Plus we still had her in a cloth diaper. We decided to change both her outfit and the diaper in the car before setting off, and I got the fun task of holding the dogs in check while G had the even more fun task of getting the baby ready AGAIN in the back of the car. She loved getting naked in the cold as you can probably imagine. The dogs had to be evacuated from the car in order for G to have enough room, and they were going nuts with the beach just across the street and having a really hard time understanding why they couldn't just go already, despite me trying to explain it to them a bunch of times. So another 20 minutes or so lost there.

We finally hit the beach. By this point, it was pretty late in the afternoon and we had maybe about an hour of sunlight left. But it all ended up ok and it didn't even matter that it was too cold to take the baby out of the carrier. She fussed a bit at first (by the way, Rookie Mistake #3 ended up not hurting us too badly -- waiting until we got there to try the baby carrier for the first time). I think she initially wasn't too sure if she liked the carrier or not but decided very quickly that it was a great way to nap and slobber all over mom's chest at the same time. So that worked out well too.

As it got colder, I just zipped up, so you couldn't even see here . . . notice the little feet dangling from my sweatshirt? That's her! :)

One lady thought I was pregnant, but really, come on? What pregnant woman have you seen that's that big pretty much from the chest area down to the belly? It was an awkward "belly" too, all elongated and weird looking, with little toes sticking out.

We stayed at the beach for about an hour and a good time was had by all, especially Mia.

And even the kid finally got to check out her surroundings for a bit at the end. We didn't realize it until we got there, but the back-up outfit we had taken for her said "I'm just beachy." This particular picture doesn't show the words, but they're there, I promise. How much do we rock as parents that we were able to clothe our kid in a perfectly themed outfit for the occasion?

So far, so good, right? If you've been paying close attention though so far, you'll have counted up the minutes and realize we're almost a good 2 hours away from a feeding. Plus, we actually didn't quite leave right after the DZ was fed anyway, so we're pretty darn close to when she gets hungry.

Anyway, so we get in the car, and everything's still great. It takes us a little while to get the dogs dried off and everyone back in the car, but it wasn't too bad. As we head home, we decide to pick up some Thai food on the way home. I make the call as G starts driving and put in our order. And then, that's when it happened, about 5 minutes or so after we've left. The kid starts wailing. And wailing. And wailing. She cried the whole way to the Thai place (about 15 minutes). I'm in the front seat and can't really move to the back because the dogs are taking over the whole space. So all we could really do is try to talk to her from the front, and that proved to be totally ineffective.

We don't really know what to do at this point. We're 45 minutes from home, with a planned stop for a food pick up. We have a bottle that we've brought but we put it in a little cooler and don't know how to warm it up for her. And even if we could, it's not like I could just go back there and try to feed her while we're moving. I guess Rookie Mistake # 4 would be the whole cold milk thing but since we still haven't figured out a way around that really, I'm not sure it qualifies as a mistake. On another trip, I tried to take it as is, and it was ok for a while, but then I forgot about it when I got home and it spoiled before I finally remembered to put the unused portion back in the fridge. So that wasn't really an option either for a long trip.

We finally got the Thai place and decided that I would try to nurse her in the car while G ran into get the food. He also figured he'd get some hot water from them while he was in there to warm the milk. I got started and it became quickly apparent that I had no idea how to nurse her in the car. That's not so much of a Rookie mistake either so much as HUGE rookie issue. I'm used to nursing at home with a big pillow (actually, it used to be a whole pillow set up and I slowly worked my way down to just a nursing pillow). So I struggled to get the DZ in the right position and hold her there. Fortunately, I guess she was starving so she didn't seem to care that she was uncomfortable and just went to town.

G came back with the warm water but we were kind of making a go of it already with nursing by that point so we just decided to stick with that. The other thing though is that often at home, the DZ can nurse for up to an hour! I didn't really want to be hanging out in some parking lot for that long, so we decided to let her go for about 15 minutes and then just get going. We figured that would just satisfy her long enough for us to get home. And it should have except that as soon as we got back in the car and started driving, the little prima donna started wailing again.

This time, we just decided to let it go. She cried it out for a good 15 minutes or so and finally wore herself out and fell asleep. Ugh, I swear those 15 minutes seemed to last forever too! G just turned up the radio to drown her out (!), but it was much harder for me to bear. When we got home, we realized she had taken a huge dump, probably right after I fed her, and that's probably what had her bawling. And when I say huge, I'm not kidding. It was all up her butt and in her folds and crevices along her legs, AND had even leaked onto her outfit. Poor thing, of course she was crying. She had been sitting in her own poop for more than half hour. I'm sure there's some rookie mistake in there somewhere, but I'm not sure what it is exactly . . . check your kid's diaper right after feeding her in the car??

Anyway, we all survived the trip unscathed and in one piece but feeling like we had a lot more to learn about taking the kid out of the house.

Routine

So I'm a big fan of routines, and it's exciting to realize that our kid has the same love for order and schedules. Her recent (well, the last 3 weeks or so) night time ritual has been particularly endearing and goes something like this:

7:30 pm -- nurse and start prepping for bed

8:30 pm -- finish nursing

8:30 - 9:30 pm -- several diapers and several attempts to go to bed. Sometimes fussing and crying the whole time, sometimes wide awake and cheerful (whether Mom and Dad get to eat/guzzle dinner depends on which)

9:30 pm -- sudden wailing, followed by yet another diaper change, followed by another hour of nursing

10:30 pm -- more attempts to go to bed, usually consisting of Mom and Dad taking turns carrying her around the room (or bouncing on the bed or swinging or anything else that works to stop the crying)

11:00 pm -- get a bottle of pumped milk since Mom is physically and emotionally unable to nurse anymore

12:00 am -- more attempts to go to bed

12:30 am -- finally, success! down for the night and Mom and Dad get to crawl into bed

12:40 am -- wailing, followed by Mom or Dad getting to pace the living room some more

12:50 am -- repeat

1:00 am -- BEDTIME!!

In fact, our little diva is so in love with this routine that she manages to stick to it whatever curve balls we throw her way. We decide to start getting her into bed sooner? No problem, she can manage to stay awake and fuss even longer. Get a bottle in there sooner so we don't waste all that time nursing? Awesome, more time to screw around and not go to bed. Up all day and exhausted? She can at least hang on til 11pm or midnight. Uncle J and Auntie M babysitting? Perfect, let's throw at least 2 good poops their way in a half hour period or so.

But like her mother, our girl seems to realize that routines aren't everything. It's important to be flexible. And she seems to have a knack for knowing when. So this morning, for example, when I needed her to wake up early so that we could fit 2 feedings in before going to the vet in Santa Cruz, she decided to sleep in. At the vet's office, when she had time to take down a full bottle, she opted to just drink just a little bit. That way, she had plenty of time to be pretty with the vet's nurse and then save her bawling for the ride home when she got hungry again. I mean, really, who wants to stick with the regular plan when you have the chance to give Mom a hard time? What's a routine if not meant to be broken, right?

Clearly, I'm loving this.