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Entry tags:
trip report
I tend to be very sympathetic toward my fellow travelers. I mean to say, when the guy announces that everyone should have their boarding passes and IDs out, and the people behind me start snarking about how there can't seriously be anyone left who doesn't know that, and maybe they should have a Smart line and a Not So Smart line, I think you know, there may just be people in this very queue who have never flown before, and I know it's got to be hard to be the only competent person within earshot/fifteen miles/three counties/whatever, but would it kill you to at least refrain from making a public show of your contempt for others? (In the interest of not making a public show, I don't actually say any of this, because picking a fight in public with complete strangers -- who are being merely assholes and not actually violent or abusive -- about public manners misses the point rather.)
However: I am much, much, much less sympathetic to people who choose the "expert traveler" line and don't remove their fucking laptops from their fucking laptop cases. It shouldn't be that there are people in this queue who have never flown before, so WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK, PEOPLE.
Anyway. Had a good visit with my friends and the babies.
The three-year-old is in fact, as I said, three, and thus willful (as I said), but she's also, you know, three, so when she's scared by the animatronics and the light show in the dinosaur-themed restaurant and her eyes get big and she cuddles up to your side and stays there when it's over because she knows it might get scary again, you tend to overlook the fact that you sustained minor injuries carrying her flailing self up the steps for naptime the day before. (A kid who is so hysterical in her desire not to take a nap that she can barely draw breath between shrieks about not wanting to take a nap? Needs a nap. It is a tragedy that adults are the only ones who realize this.)
The 20-month-old gets very upset when people leave the room and she's not allowed to follow them, but is not picky about who's allowed to comfort her -- so when her father and her grandmother go outside to deal with car seats before we all leave, and she's stuck on this side of the baby gate and just wailing pitifully, an auntie can pick her up and pat her head and she'll bury her little face in the auntie's neck and it will all be mostly okay.
The 14-month-old was in a new place all weekend, so she learned a TON of things just from the unfamiliar environment. She was less cuddly, but that's only on account of despite the unfamiliar environment, her mother was there, so, you know.
And the two-week-old, bless his little heart, I was -- as was the case with his sisters -- unusually successful at calming him when he screamed. Last night we instructed his mother that we didn't want to come downstairs at 8am and see that she hadn't been to her bed all night, and if it meant handing the kid off to me if he was done eating but wouldn't settle in the swing or the bassinet, she was to wake me up and give me the baby. So this morning about 6 she came and got me, and I spent three hours dancing with him in the living room until he quieted, then rocking with him in the chair until he fussed, then repeat. Alas, by 9am the cycle was only taking about five minutes, so we had to take him up so she could feed him; but when she asked us to take him downstairs again about 11 so she could sleep without worrying she'd roll over, he slept in my arms for about two hours uninterrupted. (He did also, by the way, last night but not today, make progress in the being-fooled-by-things-that-are-not-food area, by which I mean he sucked my thumb hard enough that I swear I thought he'd take the nail right off -- and didn't spit it out and scream.)
So I'm home, and I have a blister on my hand from playing the drums in Guitar Hero, and I have a headache from three nights in a strange bed and strange air, and I can still feel the pressure of little hands on my collarbone and little arms around my neck and little faces against my sternum from spending a whole weekend with my arms full of other people's children. I think the wee ones were sorry to see me go, though -- so except for how it necessitates little kids being sad, that's all right.
However: I am much, much, much less sympathetic to people who choose the "expert traveler" line and don't remove their fucking laptops from their fucking laptop cases. It shouldn't be that there are people in this queue who have never flown before, so WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK, PEOPLE.
Anyway. Had a good visit with my friends and the babies.
The three-year-old is in fact, as I said, three, and thus willful (as I said), but she's also, you know, three, so when she's scared by the animatronics and the light show in the dinosaur-themed restaurant and her eyes get big and she cuddles up to your side and stays there when it's over because she knows it might get scary again, you tend to overlook the fact that you sustained minor injuries carrying her flailing self up the steps for naptime the day before. (A kid who is so hysterical in her desire not to take a nap that she can barely draw breath between shrieks about not wanting to take a nap? Needs a nap. It is a tragedy that adults are the only ones who realize this.)
The 20-month-old gets very upset when people leave the room and she's not allowed to follow them, but is not picky about who's allowed to comfort her -- so when her father and her grandmother go outside to deal with car seats before we all leave, and she's stuck on this side of the baby gate and just wailing pitifully, an auntie can pick her up and pat her head and she'll bury her little face in the auntie's neck and it will all be mostly okay.
The 14-month-old was in a new place all weekend, so she learned a TON of things just from the unfamiliar environment. She was less cuddly, but that's only on account of despite the unfamiliar environment, her mother was there, so, you know.
And the two-week-old, bless his little heart, I was -- as was the case with his sisters -- unusually successful at calming him when he screamed. Last night we instructed his mother that we didn't want to come downstairs at 8am and see that she hadn't been to her bed all night, and if it meant handing the kid off to me if he was done eating but wouldn't settle in the swing or the bassinet, she was to wake me up and give me the baby. So this morning about 6 she came and got me, and I spent three hours dancing with him in the living room until he quieted, then rocking with him in the chair until he fussed, then repeat. Alas, by 9am the cycle was only taking about five minutes, so we had to take him up so she could feed him; but when she asked us to take him downstairs again about 11 so she could sleep without worrying she'd roll over, he slept in my arms for about two hours uninterrupted. (He did also, by the way, last night but not today, make progress in the being-fooled-by-things-that-are-not-food area, by which I mean he sucked my thumb hard enough that I swear I thought he'd take the nail right off -- and didn't spit it out and scream.)
So I'm home, and I have a blister on my hand from playing the drums in Guitar Hero, and I have a headache from three nights in a strange bed and strange air, and I can still feel the pressure of little hands on my collarbone and little arms around my neck and little faces against my sternum from spending a whole weekend with my arms full of other people's children. I think the wee ones were sorry to see me go, though -- so except for how it necessitates little kids being sad, that's all right.