It's official, Pumpkin has now crossed the Mason Dixon line and has seen snow! These are just two of the "firsts" that we have celebrated in the past few weeks.
We spent Valentine's weekend in the Land of Lincoln so that Aaron's extended family could meet our little Pumpkin, many for the first time. We flew out of Lake Charles' new and improved airport, which is a blog story in and of itself. First, security took this opportunity to test all of their "skills" on us. As they are paging "Passengers Brown" and presumably shutting the airplane door, I have security guards "testing" the water in Aly's bottle. For what, I do not know, but apparently she looked suspicious. We finally get on the plane, only to sit on the runway for half an hour while they de-ice the plane. As we're lifting off, the pilot announces that we are on a non-stop flight to Houston Intergalactic Airport. Just when I think things on this leg of our journey cannot get worse, I learn they do not make coffee for the 5:45 AM flight. Of course, who needs coffee in the early morning hours. I vow never to fly LCH again.
After a literal sprint through the Houston airport, we make our connecting flight and land in St. Louis on time. Everyone loves our little Pumpkin and she loved everyone. She was unimpressed with snow, refusing to touch it despite Aaron and my best efforts. Although she didn't quite make snow angels, we did have a few other "firsts" on the trip, the proudest of which was that Pumpkin finally crawled. That's right folks, up on all fours, belly off the ground, and IN FORWARD! We were concerned it was just a fluke, but I'm here one week post-trip to tell you that it was no fluke - Pumpkin is, in fact, a crawler.
As an aside, everyone warned me that I should not push mobility because life would never be the same...boy were they right. Just as soon as we had finished mounting foam rubber on the ceramic tile stair, Pumpkin learned to open (and slam shut) the drawers to her dresser. What she hadn't yet learned was to move her fingers. Luckily she is a tough girl and there were no tears, but no sooner had I removed her from that danger than she was pulling on wires from the back of the television. Seriously, there is no rest for the weary when their baby starts moving! Not only that, but with her new found mobility she seemed to have lost the ability or desire to sleep through the night and she has awakened every single night just to be rocked. Between the crawling and the rocking, I'm close to being back to newborn mother exhaustion level.
Back to the trip...Pumpkin not only crawled, but she also visited her first dairy farm, saw her first live cow, and attended her first birthday party. During all these firsts, mommy also sledded for the first time. All in all, it was a lovely, albeit short visit.
The trip home was quite another story. I realize now just how lucky we have been in all of our travels with Pumpkin because, before this return trip, she has slept on every single flight we have ever taken. I didn't think about attributing that to the fact that we always fly in the morning. This return flight just so happened to leave St. Louis at 4 PM and land in Lake Charles at 8 PM. Looking back, I cannot figure out WHAT we were thinking - this is prime play-eat-sleep time and we sure paid for our ill-advised flight scheduling.
As with the Lake Charles airport, St. Louis personnel also determined that Pumpkin was "suspicious" and pulled her diaper bag out of line for a full investigation. Once again, her bottles were tested and her bag meticulously inspected. Once they ruled her out as a terrorist, we preceded to our gate.
The first flight from St. Louis to Houston was relatively uneventful other than her first full blown temper tantrum. It started with a little sneer and a couple grunts and within mere seconds she was in full blown rage. I put the pacifier backwards in my teeth and pretended I was sucking on it. Now, let me clarify that this trick ALWAYS works like a charm in getting a smile and should have provided plenty of time for Aaron to shake up a bottle. Unfortunately, this particular fit was already well past the point of no return. She grabbed the pacifier from my mouth with the angriest glare and slammed it on the floor, screaming and throwing herself backwards. Fortunately, just about this time Aaron finished making the bottle and we were able to calm her down with that before she eventually fell asleep. Sadly, I got a sneak peak into not only the terrible twos but also the looks I'm sure to get well into her teens.
Thinking we had faced the worst of it, we board our last flight from Houston to Lake Charles. A co-worker of mine and his wife happened to be on the same flight. They were excited to see us, but I could not say the same. Now don't get me wrong, I like both of these people, but for some reason, having someone we knew on the plane made me that much more nervous. Having strangers judge my parenting is one thing, but someone I worked with every day was something else. I liked to keep up the illusion that I had everything under control.
In any event, I keep telling myself that the flight is only one hour - how bad can it possibly be? Well, I'll tell you, one hour on a tiny plane with a fidgety, over-stimulated and strong-willed infant is the absolute longest hour of any mother's life. She wasn't hungry. She wasn't tired. She simply wanted to play and didn't want to be confined in my arms anymore. As you can imagine, there are only a limited number of things on a plane with which to distract a 9 month old and we quickly ran through those. Unfortunately for the man in front of me, her single minded obsession was with his bald spot. I tried to keep her from touching it, but that just frustrated her more. The flight attendant offered her empty cups to play with, which helped for about two minutes. After 60 solid minutes of pass-the-baby between Aaron and I we finally landed.
No sooner did we get to our waiting car then all hell broke loose. Pumpkin was so overly tired by the time we reached the car (an hour past her normal bedtime) that she screamed, the loudest most blood curdling scream of all time, for the entire 20 minute drive to the house. We even pulled over once to make sure she was not in pain - the scream was that bad. Fortunately, the end of that drive was home sweet home! And boy was she happy to see her crib - she slept through the night without a peep!
The next morning I'm in trial and, though exhausted, I think things are back to normal. During our lunch break I get a confused email from a paralegal in our office asking what I wanted her to do with the video I had sent her. I was then the one that was confused. Looking back through my emails I realized what happened and could barely quit laughing long enough to explain it to her. Apparently when I was using my phone as a distraction to play YouTube clips of the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, Pumpkin somehow figured out how to send the video clip to this paralegal. My baby's first email! The poor girl at my office had watched the entire 10 minute clip trying to figure out whether (1) it was part of the trial prep or (2) it was a joke. Unfortunately for her, neither was the case.
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