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Wow! The holidays have come and gone. Now that we are back to real life, I should
probably get a post out about Ginny’s first Christmas.
I am
very fortunate to get the entire week between Christmas and New Years off, so
we were able to spend a lot of time with our families. We spent the first weekend with Aaron’s mom
and Aunt. Then we went to my parents’
house in San Diego for one night. Then
we went to Orange County for my family’s traditional Christmas Eve get
together. I felt bad because she was
tired and hungry by the time we arrived.
Instead of greeting everyone with her usual smile, she burst into tears
the moment we stepped through the door.
Once I fed her, though, she returned to her usual happy self.
Christmas
morning, we got up stupid early to cart ourselves down to the airport to fly to
Oregon to visit my aunt. My side of the
family does this every year – getting up at a ridiculously early hour on
Christmas morning, opening presents before dawn, stuffing some bagels and
coffee in our faces before heading to the airport. We’ve always flown out of San Diego, but this
year Aaron and I decided to fly out of LAX and meet up with my parents for our
connecting flight at the San Francisco airport.
This way Guinevere could sleep in her own crib Christmas Eve . . . and
we could save a couple hundred dollars.
However, next time, I think it might be worth the extra money to fly out
of San Diego. In San Diego, it seems
that most other people do their traveling before Christmas Day, so the airport
is usually pretty calm when we leave. I
was shocked at how busy LAX was at 5am on Christmas morning! There were lines everywhere!
One
thing we learned - United Airlines does not let people with infants board
early. They are not a very family
friendly airline. Honestly, though, it’s
probably for the best that we didn’t board early, since we had to sit on the
plane for about an hour and a half after boarding before taking off. Our flight was almost an hour late because
they took too long loading our luggage.
Unfortunately, we had a really tight connection in San Francisco. There is only one flight per day that goes to
the tiny town in Oregon where my aunt lives and we almost missed it. We ran (holding the baby and pushing the
stroller) through the airport to the shuttle to a different terminal, and then
we had to go up an elevator to run to our gate, just to go down another
elevator. The guy at the gate told us
that had we been 2 minutes later, he would have had to close the door and we
would have missed our flight. If it
hadn’t been for my parents standing there at the gate, assuring them that we
were on the way, the airline probably would have closed the doors and left
without us.
We
finally got on the plane, and I pulled out my hooter hider (a special cover
that lets me see the baby while feeding her, but no one else can see my
business). Feeding the baby on take off
and landing is the advice every mom gets about how to help babies’ ears when
flying. The flight attendant came up to
me and said, “I’m sorry, but we have a policy that baby’s can’t be attached to
you on take off or landing.” When I
protested, she said, “It’s just for take off and landing.” I said, “But that’s the whole point. It’s supposed to help with their ears.” I was a bit offended and thought to myself
that perhaps it was the attendant’s way of telling me not to nurse in
public. Later in the flight, the
attendant came up and asked if we had a Baby Bjorn (but she pronounced it
“B-jhorn”). Apparently, the policy is
that the baby can’t be attached in a carrier, like a Baby Bjorn or Ergo, and
she thought that’s what the hooter hider was.
She apologized for the confusion, but I was still irritated from the
cumulative effect of everything.
When
we finally arrived in Oregon, my aunt greeted me with arms outstretched. Of course, they weren’t stretched for
me. Oh no, they were stretched out to
hold the baby. My aunt doesn’t have any
children of her own, so Guinevere is like a granddaughter to her. It was her first time meeting G, and it was
love at first sight on both parts. My
aunt has always been good with children, and Guinevere seemed to warm
immediately to her.
My
sister and her fiancé came out to join us the day after Christmas. Unfortunately, their flight was an hour and a
half late leaving from New York and they did miss the one flight per day to my
aunt’s tiny town. My dad had to
frantically call the airline and find a flight to the nearest town, which is 2
½ hours away. Then he and my mom drove
the 5 hour round trip to go pick them up while Aaron and I stayed in with my
aunt. Of course, their luggage didn’t
make the new flight, but it arrived the next day, so it wasn’t too bad.
We
had a great time hanging out with family and doing a little relaxing. Though we did learn the hard way that babies
need routine! I know I’ve read this in
countless places, but never truly understood it until now. Guinevere has never been a great napper. Somehow at daycare they manage to get her to
take 2 solid naps per day. She was never
consistent with us on the weekends at home – and then you add on top of that
all the travel and new people and new things to see and you end up with one
very over stimulated, over tired baby!
By the end of our travels, it was taking an hour or two just to get her
to go to bed at night. And it wasn’t
just the little whimper/fussiness that she often does while trying to fall
asleep. I’m talking about an hour of
full out screaming, leading up to what Aaron and I call the “scream of
death.” The scream of death is a
particularly painful cry that she gives that makes you feel like the worst
parent ever – like you are doing something wrong to her. It is horrible! One night Aaron and I looked at each other
and said, “we can’t keep doing this.
There has to be something we can do.”
So we decided to ask our daycare person what her schedule is and then
emulate that at home. We’ve also come up
with a bedtime routine that works for us and that we are sticking very strictly
to for right now. It is amazing the
difference routine makes! We have our
happy baby back! I’m not going to say
that putting her to bed is always a breeze.
But it’s not an hour of screaming – so now I have a little energy left
for cleaning, blogging, relaxing, or whatever else I want to do in the hour and
a half that I can manage to stay awake after putting her down.
Some of my favorite images from the holidays:
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| Guinevere and Grandma Kathy |
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| Learning how to open presents |
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| With Aunt Peggy |
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| We almost lost Guinevere amongst all the presents. |
