And on to Savannah

After a few days in Charleston we headed to Savannah. We again started with a self guided walking tour and late in the (very hot) afternoon) found another fountain designated as a pool I, of course, had NOT put a bathing suit or swim diaper in the baby bag, so we decided to just let her go in with her clothes on this time and change her after. It took her a few minutes to warm up to the idea again again, but then she loved it and cried when it was time to go.

This one was a little different as you couldn’t really wade into the fountain, but instead there were spots where water was sprouting up from the ground that you could run through and other spots of mini waterfalls about the monkey’s height that she could get under. And, in the spirit of all that is random, this one had a lifeguard!

Mostly she seemed to be there to stop the kids from running. With a 17 month old, I was pretty glad for it (the monkey had been knocked into / over a couple of times) and yet, we all know I’m not REALLY mature enough to be a parent as I was looking at the kids running and thinking – dude, if I were a 9 year old boy I’m not sure I could NOT run either! The place was MADE for running! For leapfrogging over each of the spouts of water as fast as you can!

Anyway, after a hot afternoon of exploring the pretty parks and architecture of Savannah (and wondering if maybe I should try to read Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil again. Then remembering that I really couldn’t get into it/ didn’t like it and I should probably just rend the movie…), we decided to go to Tybee beach the next day.

I have a theory that my body NEEDS to experience sand between my toes several times a year to keep my equilibrium – and, dude, I was due! And it would be nice to have a relaxing day at the beach (or to find out if that concept was possible with a toddler). So we headed to the beach, bought some sand toys there and were lucky enough to get a spot under the pier with all the other parents trying to keep their kids out of the sun. And, in YET another example of how old I’m getting… it turns out it’s kind of nice to sit in the shade at the beach. You don’t get too hot. You don’t have to worry about sunburn. Yeah, I’m like a million. The monkey enjoyed playing in the sand (the one problem with under the pier is that’s generally where all the more… hmm “illicit?” stuff goes on at night, right? We’d cleared the area of any bottles or other garbage we saw, but the monkey was the one to find the used condom when she started digging. EW!). She even enjoyed the surf when she got used to it. And Momma enjoyed the soft serve ice cream before we left!

In order to avoid the horrors of another ALL DAY drive, we decided to stop in Chapel Hill on the way back – which was really cute, totally worth seeing (a side note – though we got there too late for real “touring,” I noticed a lot of stuff was free! Something I always love on a trip!). So we did 2 days of long drives instead…

The second day my husband pointed out that we could take the highways home or we could take 15 which would be way more scenic and only 40 minutes longer. I said, you know, if it was just us, I’d be all about 15. But… I don’t know… That last 40 minutes of a long car ride with the baby can be VERY long. So we took the highways. And she did well – till about the last hour / 1.5 hours mark and then all hell started to break loose and those words came back to us! We were glad not to add another 40 mins (although, to be fair, she did then fall asleep).

So we finally made it back and “staycation”-ed a couple of days at home. My sister in law even came over to baby-sit on Saturday so we could go to the movies (at which point we realized that there is nothing out and they apparently now charge $8 for popcorn! This is why I sneak snacks in… And why I clearly need to go buy the “mom purse” with room for more snacks!).

Yeah, so we’d finally arrived in Charleston (part II)

We’d used points to get a room at Springhill Suites, hoping that “suites” would imply enough living space to give the baby some room. Not so much. So each night one of us would try to rock her / calm her down while the other one hid in the bathroom / closet / etc. waiting. Or we’d sit in the dark room / lay on the bed and pretend to be asleep till she went down – which, at least in my case, inevitably led to me actually falling asleep and waking up at midnight or so to brush my teeth and take out my contacts. My husband looked at me one night in Savannah when we were lying in bed at 8:30 while it was still light out and we could hear kids playing in the pool outside and said – “you know, this is the 9 year old me nightmare - going to bed when it’s light out and you can hear kids playing. At 33, it’s kind of awesome!”

So yes, sadly, I’m old and boring. Falling asleep at 8:30 sounded great! Especially as we seemed to have set ourselves a 3 or 4 am wake up call – of the biological variety when the baby would start crying. At home, when this goes on a few nights, we’ll start to let her cry it out (she’s going to be finding her way out of that crib soon and I really don’t want to spend 3 hours walking her back to her bed each night till she gets the idea that she has to stay there. As an aside, I am making no progress against this goal.), but we worried about doing this in a hotel where she might wake up the whole place (with that siren going, they might think it was an air raid!). So my husband would get her and move to the couch (this was the part that made it a “suite”) with her for the next few hours – while she moved the length of his body in her fitful sleep. At the second hotel, the couch was not at all comfortable, so at 6, he walked over to me and unceremoniously said – “your turn!” – while he laid down to try to get some feeling back in his extremities after cutting off circulation on the lower vertebrae. So I stayed awake while my “sort of” sleeping daughter made her way up and down the length of me – taking a foot in the belly, an elbow in the neck, whatever! Just make this kid sleep! Yeah, by the last nights, we decided she couldn’t cry that long and it would be just fine – the walls were thick enough. And, shockingly, it turned out it was – her tears were short lived and she went back to sleep. Well, dang, if I’d known that…

Anyway, our first full day in Charleston we decided to go see Fort Sumter. We took the ferry out, listened to the tour and then were told we had about an hour on the island before the boat left, so get going. It’s actually a small island, but we really felt like we could use another 15-30 minutes (I’d say the monkey did NOT agree). I thought we could take whatever ferry back rather than being relegated to the one we came on, so we asked. Yes, but the next ferry coming was actually coming from a different place. We could get on that one, but it wouldn’t take us back to our car. Hmm…OK. The next one coming from our port would get us back about 3 hours later. So, uh, not 30 minutes then? We decided we could probably read about whatever was in the museum online. Also at the spot where you get the ferry (well, one of them, apparently) to Fort Sumter was the USS Yorktown (an aircraft carrier). The husband was VERY excited at the possibility of touring this! But we decided we’d tortured the baby enough for one day and we’d just come back the next (the 4th!) to see it. We had not yet pulled out of the parking lot when the baby fell asleep in her car seat – yeah, she was done.

Unfortunately we thought about it later and realized that aircraft carriers don’t really tend to be stroller friendly. In fact they involve a lot of climbing up ladders and through hatches – not something all that conducive to a toddler. (I told a friend of mine this and she said that we were clearly wimps as indigenous people in S. America climb the Andes with babies all the time (she doesn’t have kids – and also was kidding). I said that they probably had baby slings (the Mobie (sp?) I’ve drooled over) and we didn’t.)

Most of the rest of our time in Charleston was spent roaming around – a (self guided) walking tour and just checking the place out. We discovered the fountains that are designated as public pools and let the monkey go in in her diaper (no, it’s not a swim diaper, but it’s a fountain, not REALLY a pool anyway!), vowing to throw a swim diaper and her bathing suit in our bags for next time) while I got soaked hovering over her (which wasn’t half bad in 90 degrees either!).

Highlights beyond the fountain included a Mexican place with $3 margaritas for Momma... Hmm, having fond memories of Charleston as I go back to work now...

Happy 4th of July!

Taking a small blogging break this week. I'll catch up with you guys next week - hope you have a wonderful holiday!

I generally thought it was pretty fun until I started to black out. For my husband, blacking out was where the fun began!

Monday I mentioned that we went to Kings Dominion (an amusement park) as a belated birthday gift to my husband last week. Now the awesome thing about going to an amusement park on a random Friday in May is there are no lines. Paradoxically, the problem with going to an amusement park on a random Friday in May is – there are no lines.

Wait, bare with me!

I hate waiting on all those crazy lines in the blazing heat as well. But I’ve come to realize – I think that those lines possibly serve a purpose. They give me time to resettle my stomach and hold my lunch back down before I get on again. This was not an option last week. No… it wasn’t…

We got to the park about 10 (it opened at 9:30) and headed in to see what the day would bring us. I haven’t been to an amusement park in several years – the last time was when my friend’s company sponsored an amusement park day in November. So there were actually almost no lines then as well – and I already knew that no lines could be a problem… Before that… hmm… well, when my Mom and I went to Disney in 2004, we were using day 3 of our 4 days passes bought in 1989. So you get the basic idea.

We headed right for the grizzly – my husband’s favorite from his previous visit (senior class trip, 1996). We jumped into the front car and away we went. We got back – and hey, still no one waiting for the front car – let’s go again. The third time, we had to move back to another car. Then I said I needed to stop to walk to another ride before going again.

So we got to the next one – I believe it was called the hurler. Also, an old wooden coaster (like Grizzly), so rickety and load and bounces your head around, but no upside down parts. I think we did that one twice (?).

We were working our way around the park mostly sticking to the “big” rides. We did have a short stop on a less intense ride, but actually got kind of bored, so it was back to the big guns.

It all starts to get somewhat hazy… but I think we hit our first metal upside down roller coaster around this point – I think it was the anaconda. And suddenly my husband had a new favorite. Then there was the indoor in the dark coaster, Flight of fear – and we both had a new favorite. But now we were at the back of the park – at the newest coaster the park was unveiling for 2010 – The Intimidator.

Now I generally think these ride names are cheesy (the Dominator, I started calling the denominator – which let’s face it, a math test can be WAY scarier than a few loop-di-loops!), but this one may have intimidated me a little… We head in and this was the first ride where we actually had to wait a few minutes to ride (the injustice of it all!). But finally we get on and start heading up the first hill – pretty much a straight lift up about 300 feet (learned that later), then you fly down the hill at a bit over 90 mph (again, checked our stats later – you’ll see why in a sec) and immediately bank right (I think). This was about the point where I thought – why do I still have my eyes shut? Oh God, I don’t actually have my eyes shut. I think… I think I just blacked out a little…

We got off the ride while my husband crowed how that was the greatest coaster ever and I wondered exactly where the ground was. Still feeling dazed by it, I turned to him and said – I think I almost passed out on that… Once he established that I was OK (as we passed another woman throwing up on the pathway out), this only helped to confirm to him that this was, in fact, the greatest coaster EVER.

Beyond feeling a bit shaky, I was also feeling pretty lame. I mean how OLD am I getting now? What loser passes out on a roller coaster (or fine, almost passes out)? And this is where we turn to technology to save my self esteem. My husband checked the web on his phone and found that apparently you experience about 5 Gs on the ride and most people will start to black out at 4-5 Gs.

While that helped my ego, it didn’t quite help my “sea legs.” But I didn’t want to ruin his day! So we stopped to get lunch (and funnel cake!) and then headed for another coaster. Two coasters later, I was feeling all the shakier and my husband noticed that I was starting to look pale. So we stopped for awhile and just lay down on a bench and then listened to a show. And then we were off! (I may be lame on the wooziness, but I want points for the rally!) We did a few more rides and then… I gave in. I knew he REALLY wanted to ride the Intimidator again. So “intimidated” as I was… I started towards the ride. As we got to the line, one woman turned to me and said – go ahead! I am NOT riding that. I hear that you black out on the second hill.

Where was she when I needed her? Where was she to tell me that was “normal?” (I’m not sure it’s “normal” to go back and do it again, but that’s another point…)

We got to the front, all the while my husband coaching me to tense my leg muscles so that it shunts the blood flow and keeps it from all draining from my head (something he learned in flight school! Flight School! I need flight school to ride this roller coaster!). The second time through I only grayed out a bit (he did too this time).

But thank goodness we could call it a day then! Cause I really needed to lie down…

I wondered later if doing things like that was killing brain cells – you know, depriving them of oxygen and therefore killing them. My husband suggested that I probably would have been able to figure out that answer before I rode the ride.

What’s the craziest roller coaster you’ve been on? Or the stupidest thing you’ve done (twice!) for the one you love?

Mystery trip

For my husband’s birthday (in March), I gave him a mystery trip – a night away with activities planned by me and, the big deal, our first night away from the baby. (yeah, I feel like I should have a drum roll in their or something – psshaw, like I’d have any idea how to pull that off!)

So Friday morning, we got up early and dropped the munchkin at her Grandma’s and hit the road while I teased my husband about where we MIGHT be going. He’s generally not a great a guesser when it comes to these things. He thinks I’m a good guesser (to the point that he’s suggested I’m psychic), but it’s because, being a bad guesser himself, he sometimes REALLY gives it away with his clues. I think this runs in the family. Before the monkey was born, his Mom told us that she “knew” what the baby’s name was. She just had decided it and was sure. As, at 7 months pregnant, we did not actually “know” what the baby’s name was (I think we were narrowed down to 3 possibilities, but I was still swinging widely between favorites), we asked what it was. We told her it could save us a lot of time and trouble! She wouldn’t tell us, though, insisting that could change the outcome – but she promised that she’d told my father in law so he could confirm if she was right. We begged for a clue and asked what letter it began with. So she said, well, it could be one of 2 letters.

So work with me here – if it’s one of two letters, we’re seriously narrowed down. It’s basically got to be a vowel (most likely A/E, but I guess there might be other options), C/K (seems the most likely possibility in the bunch), F/Ph or C/S. So I said that. Her face froze on C/K and she said – ok, you’re too good at this! No more clues! Now, I knew that she’d intended to name my husband Kathleen if he was a girl, so it wasn’t too hard to get to a likely guess here (I didn’t voice it then, as she seemed a little upset that I’d “figured” so much out, but that was her guess. By the way – our daughter’s name is not Kathleen.)


OK, back to the present. You see where I’m going on clues. So when I told my husband, it was a little north of Richmond. It was a day totally focused on fun (I didn’t go so far as to say “amusement” – I thought that might be too much). And he’d be “king” for the day as it was his birthday present. I didn’t worry at all that he’d guess King’s Dominion (an amusement park just north of Richmond). If you didn’t guess either, don’t feel bad (esp. if you didn’t grow up near DC) – I wasn’t trying to make it too easy (though I thought king for a day was a risky giveaway) and he got other clues (like, you’ve said you wanted to go here since the baby was born. You’ve been here before, but not in a lot of years. Etc.).

I think my favorite part of the day was watching his face light up when he realized where we were going. His friends/coworkers all knew we were doing some sort of mystery trip, but guessed that he was going to end up at a bed and breakfast somewhere. Now, I have to admit – I’d considered that, but eventually discarded it for 2 reasons. First – this was HIS day, not mine. The B&B would be something I’d love, but while my husband would enjoy it, it really wouldn’t be an exciting surprise for him. And second – the B&B involves “breakfast,” right? Something they generally want you to get up for - early. So why on earth would I plan our first night away from the baby – our first chance to sleep in in 15 months for a place with a wake up call for breakfast by 8 or 8:30?! That’s crazy talk!

Anyway, more on the amusement park in another post, but overall the day was great. We actually didn’t stay till close, as after riding countless rides and screaming for hours (and getting up early to head out!), we were pretty well beat at the end of the day! So we headed to the hotel and got cleaned up for dinner, but FIRST – we flipped channels!

I’m not sure I’ve mentioned it here, but when we moved we never renewed our cable subscription at our house. We were thinking – it tends to be very expensive and how much do we ever really use it? I mean, there’s usually NOTHING on tv and we really don’t want the monkey watching much tv. So instead of cable, we figured we’d just go with broadcast tv. Except there’s pretty much no signal at our house… Oops. So, instead we’ve got the laptop hooked up to the tv and we watch a lot of netflix instant and we catch our favorite shows on hulu. So, in the end, we really more just watch stuff we actually WANT to watch instead of just zoning out with what’s on. 95% of the time this is a bonus. But about 5% of the time, we just jones to zone out with the nothing that is on all the time! Oh, and we don’t catch enough news this way. We get our news online, but I felt like I really missed the constant weather updates during “snowmanji” (aren’t we supposed to be glued to the screen watching accumulations at those times?).

So anyway, a hotel room with TWO TVs was like a resort for us! And yeah, there was still NOTHING on… So we went to dinner, fell asleep early after our long day and then… oh, wait for it, wait for it… SLEPT IN. To quote (or probably paraphrase), Office Space, I did nothing and it was everything I hoped it would be.

We headed down to breakfast (hot breakfast served till 10 – now that’s a more reasonable wake up time! OK, we woke up by about 8:30 anyway. Our internal clocks are just broken now!) and then decided to head to Richmond to tour the Confederate White House before we headed home.

Yes, we did miss the monkey. But we actually really enjoyed ourselves – and truthfully, that thought did not consume me the way I worried it might. We did check on her quite a few times, but she was happy and well cared for and she and her grandparents had a ball!

What was your first get away without your children like? I’m guessing most people don’t spend it at a kid centric place like a theme park! What’s the longest time away you’ve gotten? Did you do well the first time or just worry about the little ones throughout?

Five Things I can't survive without

So today's question is 5 things I can't live without (I'm going with 'on a desert island.' I can't choose 'in the car' - I've been living without my sanity there too long to suggest I need anything - well, except snacks. I'm nursing. I always need snacks...). Supahmommy shows a survivor logo, but I like her take on it - this is more an island resort. Hubby and I have been talking about taking a vacation - which has made me dream of a "real" vacation, so I'm going to put that dream into words. So without further ado, here's what I want to "survive" at my island resort.

1. Room service. I mentioned the part where I'm nursing, right? So lots of food is a must!

2. Room service will also deliver drinks - like champagne and good red wine. Yes, I know I'm nursing, but this is my fantasy, so why not?

3. A well loved and trusted nanny - so the munchkin in nearby, but also cared for while I'm... hmm... swimming with the dolphins. And drinking all that champagne!

4. My husband - He's not #4 in order of importance! But lest you think he's not there for all this, I thought I should be clear.

5. Some good books to enjoy while relaxing in the sun.

Would it be wrong to put "my pre-baby body" on the list?

How about you?


To be fair, I'll got with the "other" view - just the things I can't live without. It reminds me of a question some of my friends were jokingly asking a few years ago - if there was a superhero action figure of you, what would your accessories be? The dvr featured heavily among the answers... I've realized my responses will really just point out my uberdorkiness (I'm just shy of adding a retainer / head gear to the list...), but then again - that's me!

1. Zyrtec. See, I told you. Just shy of head gear, here are my allergy meds.
2. Books - I love to read! It's one of my favorite "have time" passtimes.
3. A hairband - I'm stealing this idea from Carrie Alexander (http://olivershawn.blogspot.com/) as I realized she's totally right on what I always have with me.
4. Food - ha! So be it my fantasy or my reality, there are snacks to be had!
5. My cell phone - I left the house without it a couple of months ago and a friend of mine suggested it was akin to leaving the baby at home alone. I don't know what I ever did before I had one.

A last vacation

Months ago I had promised my Mom we would come visit her in Florida before I went back to work. OK, so maybe when we promised that, it was before we knew she’d stay with us 2 months… But still, I figured - it’ll be fun. And we could really use a bit of a break.

Clearly I had never traveled with a baby before.

Actually – the trip was fine. The thing was it wasn’t all that different from being home on maternity leave. In our “BC” (before children) days, a trip to my Mom’s condo meant lounging by the pool with a book, taking a walk down to the swanky hotel down the beach for frozen drinks, going out to dinner and doing a whole lot of nothing. I can also imagine this future time – where it will mean building sandcastles, looking at fish, going to visit the monkey jungle and the Miami zoo and doing a whole lot of family stuff. What I hadn’t figured out when I started this trip was how to do this now.

The first morning we got up thinking we could head down to the pool early – before the heat of the day. We could cover the munchkin in sunscreen and keep her in the shade and all would be fine. Maybe she’d sleep in her stroller so I could read or my Mom could watch her and I could swim.

Three hours later we’d made it downstairs – in the heat of the day – the worst time to take a baby out. We DID still keep her in the shade and covered (no sunburn here!), but it wasn’t exactly as planned. Nor was the time by the pool. It turned out that she did not agree with us that it would be fun to sleep in her stroller. She wanted to lie on the lounge chair and kick for awhile. She was OK with sleeping there too – not in the stroller, but on the chair where I could hover over her and panic about her falling onto the concrete pavement below. It also turned out that she wanted to eat constantly – her favorite time to eat was just after I’d get into the pool. Out I’d come to try to figure out the wrap over my wet swimsuit (desperate to not flash the whole pool area).

The next several days were essentially the same. My husband would sit bored next to me (he’s not a big fan of the lie around, read a book vaca. He preferred the idea of snorkeling, but didn’t want to abandon me.) while I held her or fed her. I’d long to move into the sun for a few minutes, but couldn’t with the baby in tow.

It wasn’t until nearly the end of the week that we started to figure out how to do this. Our last days we tried covering her as completely as we could and strolling down to the swanky hotel with the baby bjorn. Sure I couldn’t drink there, but we could get a nice seat in the shade to enjoy the ambience. We also tried walking to the lighthouse down the beach via the road – where munchkin could be pushed in the stroller – rather than the beach. This was fun, but man was it a LONG walk without ocean breezes! We also gave her her first taste of south beach and went to lunch there (I could have breastfed without the wrap and not been the least dressed!). We even went to lunch once ourselves and left her with grandma! We’d really been hoping to make it out to dinner, but she’s decided that she has taken against the bottle… She was doing so well with it, but we didn’t give it to her regularly and she’s forgotten what to do with it. This is NOT going to go well when I go back to work next week.