As I said in my last post, we’ve been a busy little family over the last three months with travelling, minor illness and my return to work. I’ll keep you posted on my recent running and give you a few little updates over the next few posts in a series I’ll call “Hijacked Hiatus” to get you all back up to speed because it just won’t all fit in one post.
On running: I ran twice in July (pathetic, I know) but I’ve run twice so far this week. Despite not having run for a little while both runs felt great! Fresh legs are the main contributing factor to that but it could also be a result of the moderate pace I chose and the limited mileage (I did an easy 2.5K each time). I’ve decided to ease myself back into running this week with low clicks and a breezy pace. Starting next week I’ll have to ramp things up a little because my galpal (who had her sweet baby girl, Macy, in May) and I are going to run a 5K race with our strollers in a mere five weeks time (38 days to be exact). She has just started running again and is currently doing the walk-and-run combination on her treadmill to get herself back in gear. She’s probably reading this now and thinking, “Why do you need to ramp up? You’re already running, I’m the one not even running outside yet!” And that’s true. Buuuuuut, if you remember my post about strolling along with friends back in March...she’s the one with the uber-light Mountain Buggy stroller, which is now paired with an uber-light 12 pound baby. I, on the other hand, have the second hand, no idea what brand, Kijiji special for a jogging stroller weighing in at 20 pounds, paired with a 27 pound baby. So, even though I’m running further than her right now, I’m also pushing 47 additional pounds along the way. I have a feeling by race day she’ll be flying with her bundle while I pant and pray for the finish line.
(On that note, my other galpals with babes beware – this is your warning...we want mommy and baby running buddies for the race...tag, you’re it!)
Now onto my hijacked hiatus stories...let’s start with our trip west back in May: I can now officially say that I have travelled across the country with a one year old, which means I can do anything. ANYTHING. AnYtHiNg.
Before this trip I thought I’d seen it all because I travel for my job several times a year. Hubby has seen quite a bit too because he’s enjoyed the “tag-along” aspect on many occasions, accompanying me on my travels so he could see the sights and relish the attractions in cities coast to coast in Canada. Moreover, he’s enjoyed the opportunity to try local microbrewery beers in each city and take in the NHL and MLB games.
So, in having so much prior travel experience I thought I had things down pat. Lock, stock and barrel I thought I’d learned all the lessons to be learned on the road. Well, add a one year old to the mix and I was sorely mistaken.
We embarked on a ten day trip that would take us to three cities, starting with a four hour drive to the airport. The drive was great, old hat. Brenna slept only an hour of it so I thought, “Perfect, she’ll have a longer nap on the plane!” That was my first mistake.
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We boarded the first two hour flight to Toronto and within minutes Brenna was unhappy. Were her ears bothering her? No, they weren’t. Was her tummy upset? No, it wasn’t. What WAS bothering her was being forced to sit in her parent’s lap. She decided that instead of taking a nap on the flight (like sooooo many people told me she would do) she would hone her “act-like-an-orangutan” skills and attempt fleeing us by lurching in all directions and grabbing anything she could to help maneuver herself away from the safety of our laps - the backs of seats, the food and beverage cart the flight attendant was pushing, other people as they walked by to go to the bathroom, the hair of the lady sitting in front of us…basically anything within grasp. That got tiring, FAST.
What she wanted was to play on the floor of the plane, and of course being the type of Momma that I am (using antibacterial wipes on everything she touches outside our home), I indignantly rejected any idea of letting her play on the dirty, almost-never-cleaned airplane floor full of leftover food and foot funk from previous passengers. I mean, what kind of mother allows their one year old to play on the floor of a very often used, very public place? Certainly not THIS mother! So, we fought and wrestled with an agitated Brenna for two hours and I thanked Jesus about a million times when we got to our stopover in Toronto.
Now we were in the airport with Brenna in tow, safely and securely in her stroller. Of course Brenna didn’t see it that way, she saw the stroller was another “restraint” device and was insistent on getting out. My only saving grace was knowing that our next flight was a mere hour away so we wouldn’t have long to wait with our little stroller-Houdini.
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| Obviously a happier day in the restraint device |
Lo and behold to our “delight” the stopover that was supposed to be a little less than an hour turned into two and a half hours due to delays. So there we sat with Brenna strapped into her little stroller, waiting. During the waiting time Brenna made every move possible to escape her stroller and play on the floor. Again…an airport floor was NOT a place I was willing to let her “run free”, so we fought her. And fought. Aaaaaaand fought. By the time our plane arrived at 8pm, Brenna’s usual bedtime, I was thanking Jesus again that we could get on, get moving, and get Brenna to go to sleep. That was mistake number two.
By flight number two, a glorious three and a half hours to Saskatoon, she was a) tired from not having her two usual two hour naps (yes, four hours of napping); b) tired because it was now her nightly bedtime; and c) agitated from not being allowed to play on the floors of the airplane and airport. She was beyond the eye rubbing kind of tired, and in full whiny baby tired mode so as soon as we began takeoff, I fed her to lull her to sleep. It worked! For about five seconds. Then she woke up, fierce like a Lion, and decided that she just couldn’t sleep on a plane, in her momma’s arms through all the commotion.
So, having become an expert orangutan from her first flight, she now went into full on ape#@!!% mode. She lost her cool COMPLETELY. She started crying like someone was hurting her, throwing a full tantrum at having to sit in our lap and would NOT STOP CRYING. And screaming. And shouting. After the first half hour, I started crying. As I sat staring out the window, silently sobbing and desperately praying for the flight to end I found myself thanking Jesus again. This time I was thanking him for the fact that we were in the air and I had no way to escape, because had we been on land I’m not sure I would have stuck around...Hubby just MAY have become a single dadda that day!! As I listened to the people in rows behind us grumbling and loudly pondering things like, “When is that baby going to stop crying?” I had to fight the urge to stand up and say, “I dunno! But if you think you can make her stop, please come and try!”
In that dark moment I decided enough was enough. Fine, give her what she wants. Let her play on the floor. Let her swing from the ceiling and grab everything in sight. Let her be the stewardess’ human speed bump in the aisles. Let her find the magical “floor food” and devour it. Let her crawl under the seats and play “tickle tickle” with strangers toes. Fine Brenna, you win. We spent the last hour of the flight numbly watching her do all the things I so harshly criticized a mere hours before as I sat in the first airport silently judging the mom who let her kids play in the KidZone without first wiping everything down with a Clorox wipe. The same mom, I recalled, who was able to sit pleasantly skimming a magazine while her kids were NOT throwing tantrums and acting like animals but were lovingly sharing toys and gleefully playing their way through the wait time. Come to think of it, they were giggling and people around us were looking at them with the standard head-turned-to-one-side –“How precious!”-smiles, instead of muttered curses and scowlse were getting. God, I envied that mom.
At the end of the day when we finally landed in Saskatoon to be picked up by my brother and his girlfriend, we were exhausted. I couldn’t even muster a response beyond a cold stare when he asked, “How was the flight?” But in the end all that was important was that we got there safely, Brenna could finally get into her little playpen for some much needed sleep, and I got out of my “stress haze” enough to remember who Jesus was and that I should thank him that it was finally OVER.
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| A cuter moment from our trip |
To sum up the day and provide myself evidence based data to review the next time I feel like taking Brenna on a trip somewhere, I did a little tally to help me make my decision:
- Number of hours Brenna slept during transition: 1
- Number of words spoken between Hubby and myself during the entirety of the day: 10
- Number of times we received blantant stern looks or scowling glances: In the teens
- Number of times a stranger had their toes tickled, hair pulled or shirt grabbed by Brenna: 8
- Number of times I wished I could run away: 3
- Number of flight attendants that gave us pitying looks while telling us, “No, she’s not that bad, really!”: 2
- Number of trips we plan on ever taking her on again: 0
- Number of people that wished they’d picked any other flight that day: All of them
- Number of times I thanked the WestJet employee that gave us a “free pass” to take Brenna’s car seat on board for our return flight after hearing our harrowing tale to prevent a repeat performance: Too many to count!
Last night's run: 2.5K/16:33/6:37 pace
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My little WestJet-ter
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