Thrashy McKickerboots

Finn was doing pretty well with the whole sleep thing there for awhile. We had a couple of 8-4:30’s and 8-5:30’s, and the other nights were only disrupted once or twice. Then two weeks ago, I could not get him into the crib without him screaming. Pete couldn’t either. He wanted out out out. He’d sleep pretty well on the bed, but that was it.

Last night bit. It bit hard. It was one of those nights where I looked at the clock and thought “Crap. It’s only 3:30.” Captain Kinesis would not sleep without thrashing and fussing and rolling about. Headbutts and feet in the face. Neither of us could calm him. Pete got up at 4:30 and changed his diaper and shoveled some yogurt into him, then brought him back up for some boob and more thrashing. By the time we got up, we were exhausted. Finn’s switch was flipped to “on.” There’s no in between. He’s pretty good at sleeping through his own thrashing and fussing, so he was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.

I hate that.

Oh.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Naps are Death

That's it.

Naps are death.

Travel Diapers

Did you know that nothing is open on Thanksgiving in the Northampton area?

I didn’t.

I had a brilliant plan. And like most brilliant plans, it went awry.

When we were gearing up for Vancouver, I had to give of the ghost of international, hotel cloth diapering. I was going to have to pack way too much crap, and I was also going to be on my own a lot. For all our car trips, we managed just fine with cloth, but this was going to be another story. I checked ahead and located a local chain of stores that carried Seventh Generation diapers, and I decided I would just walk over there and get some of those and suck it up for the week.

I was operating on the same premise for this trip. Then I hit on the G-diaper idea. I had not tried them out yet, and I thought it might be a nice middle ground. I picked up a pack and four covers. They work pretty well, though I am not entirely sure about which parts can be flushed. I brought enough for the first day and figured I would hit the co-op Wednesday evening or, heaven forbid, Whole Foods, and get some more for the week.

Then it totally slipped my mind. This latest cold, heavy exhaustion, and the lengthy trip from Logan Airport to Easthampton completely obliterated all memory of the Absolute Need for Diapers. When GrammaSue said that she had quinoa and organic apples and bluberries and other foods for Finn, we figured we did not have to drag our tired asses out of the house for a shopping trip. It could wait until Friday.

It was not until it was too late that I remembered that we needed diapers.

Did you know that nothing is open on Thanksgiving in the Northampton area except a CVS and convenience stores?

I am stuck with f$*@ing Pampers now.

Gross.

Nice plan, Ace.

Plans are all well and good until the dumbassery takes over.

Oink?

The Mass Pike was a parking lot, the baby was screaming, and I was starting to think “swine flu?” We got off the turn pike and found a CVS. Baby needed Out Of The Car, and I needed Tylenol and a thermometer.

Finn and I have had some form of sickness since September. We have the same immune system, and whatever he gets, he passes to me. I could tell that I had a new one the day before we left. The cough changed, a sore throat appeared, and then the headache. A bad one. I had that Murphy’s Law feeling. Last time I tried to travel, a cat died. What would happen now? Why not the latest hysteria? It’s all the rage after all. H1N1 would make a good answer when the co-workers asked “How was your holiday.”

Alas, I won’t get to be that interesting, it’s just another cold.

No cats were harmed in the making of this post

The last time I flew, I was in the very early stages of extremely premature labor. I didn’t know it, which can be viewed as good or bad, if I want to look back and think what might have been. Amniotic fluid started leaking at the Met on Saturday, but I thought I was just having bladder control issues. Had I understood what it was, that’s me in the hospital in New York City. By Sunday night at the hotel in New Jersey, it was worse, but I still didn’t realize it. Had I, that’s me in the hospital in Newark. Maybe they could have stopped it, maybe not. I guess you could say that I could have bought more time for my fetus, and things could have been different. He could have had dual citizenship in Minnesota and New Jersey, thus opening up numerous exciting and perhaps lucrative possibilities. As it happened, I didn’t get it until Wednesday, and they absolutely could not stop labor, and he was born in Minneapolis.

So it goes. I can speculate all I want, but who has the time? He’s doing extremely well, so “what if’s” provide nothing more than interesting scenarios that involve a preemie in a NICU in the Northeast and a family in limbo.

Flying with a fetus was easy, anyway.

I was really worried about flying with a full-blow baby person.

Captain Kinesis, as we call him, or Godzilla, as day care calls him, does not like to be thwarted or constrained in any way, and it’s the business of airplanes to thwart and constrain. I was relying on the power of The Boob and the extremely early fight to help us through at least part of the experience.

We got up at 4:00 a.m., which is not really news, aside from the fact that we had to get dressed and get things done. Finn got up at 4:30, which is not really news, aside from the fact that we had to get him dressed and out the door for our cab at 5:00.

That part went pretty well.

The airport was packed, but check-in went pretty well.

Security went pretty well.

Even Finn had to take his shoes off.

We had a lot of crap. Once we added a car seat to all the other stuff, plus a bag of baby food, I felt like we had a mile of gray bins snaking slowly through the machine.

And we packed light.

Finn was fussy and tired, so I latched him on as we started taxiing. He slept for an hour and a half. When he woke up, he had a diaper change and a walk up and down the aisle. He really wanted to get down and crawl and was mad that we would not let him. I broke out the new toys, which were interesting for 20 minutes or so. A story. More boob. Then we landed, and he loved looking out the window. That was pretty cool.

All in all, it was barely interesting enough to deserve a post.

We didn’t forget anything major. No cats died. The house is not a disaster area.

I’ll call it a success.

I've been awake since 5, so where did all the time go? No one who wakes up at 5 should be late. Of course, I did not get out of bed until 6, and then there was the shower and the hair washing and the bathrobe and the.... oh, the baby. We're on our 47th cold of the cold and flu season, and neither of us are enjoying it very much. It was time to go two hours ago, and now it's really time to go.