Big, Bad Germies

I'm not a germaphobe.

In fact, I'm the very opposite of a germaphobe. I think that healthy immune systems need germs to fight, lest they become unhealthy immune systems. I resolutely stayed away from the anti-bacterial bandwagon. I dust and clean my house, but usually not with products that claim to kill 99.99% of bacteria. (After all, it's that .01% that worries me.) I don't get flu shots and sometimes, I get the flu and during those times, I drink lots of fluids and hibernate like a grouchy bear.

And then, I went and had a kid. Now, all of a sudden, I'm like a CIA agent, scoping out public places for anyone who so much as has the sniffles. Now granted, this is partly because this is predicted to be an especially bad flu season and I don't want him getting sick, but more than that? I don't want to get sick.

For the first time ever, I'm considering the flu shot--both swine and regular. Because this year, I can't hibernate. I can't call in sick, I can't take the morning off, heck, I can't even skip the 3 am feeding to get a full night's sleep.

This year, I'm suddenly considering stocking up on anti-bacterial soap. This year, I'm turning into a germaphobe. This morning, when I woke up with a headache and a sore throat and a cough, I almost called a doctor.

But anti-germaphobic habits die hard, so instead, I drank some tea and took a nap with the baby and I'm hoping oh-so-hard that my immune system lives up to the trust I'm placing in it because this year, it's fighting for two.

Down The Rabbit Hole

Ha, I just realized it's been over a week since I posted. Where has the time gone? Well...

1. I went shoe shopping. Because I have oh, about a zillion pairs of shoes and NONE OF THEM FIT ME. I watched my feet grow and swell to ridiculous proportions during my pregnancy and I was very hopeful that eventually, they'd go back to their regular size, but apparently, that's not going to happen anytime soon and with the coming of winter, I needed more than flip-flops. Shoe shopping, by the way? Every bit as good as I remembered.

2. I've been working on running stats for an article I'm writing based on my thesis. I took this project on thinking that hey, I already did all the work, so I might as well get a publication out of it, right? WRONG. Because I'm using a slightly different sample for the article (and by "slightly different," I mean that I'm adding in questionnaires done by 60 people that I had previously taken out of my study), so I have to re-do ALL. THE. ANALYSES. This, by the way, was the part that took me months to do the first time around. And I'm doing it again, only this time, I don't have 20 hours a week to sit down and do it, so I steal 30 minutes here and an hour there while the baby sleeps.

3. McMoose took a half-day on Tuesday and we took Luke to the State Fair. I say "took Luke" like this was something we did for his sake, when in fact, we go to the fair every year, specifically so that we can eat fried foods and waste a lot of money on playing pointless games, as a result of which we win giant stuffed animals that take up vast amounts of space in our closets. But Luke enjoyed himself and McMoose and I enjoyed ourselves and the fried foods were delicious and we now own a 2-foot tall stuffed frog and a 3-foot tall blue gorilla that has a diaper and a pacifier. (I don't. Want. To talk about it.)

4. And of course, the usual play dates and meetings and craziness that somehow seems to fill up our weeks.

Back before I had this baby, I absolutely expected that as a stay-at-home mom, I'd be bored out of my skull, mostly because I thought that being a stay-at-home mom involved, you know, staying AT HOME. Ha! Silly me...

Automobil Adventures and Hotel Hassels

I'm going to preface this post by saying that I've never rented a car by myself before. But I've witnessed my mom renting any number of cars and a couple of years ago, McMoose and I rented one to drive home after visiting his family for Christmas, and from what I could remember, the process seemed fairly easy. As it turns out, my memory must have been faulty because the renting of the car and the getting to the hotel were by far the most challenging parts of our trip because it went something like this:

-Wait in a line of 3 customers while the representative tried to sort everyone out. Each person took 20 minutes. People, that's an hour of waiting FOR THREE CUSTOMERS.
-Get to the counter, FINALLY, where you're told that no, you cannot have the compact car you had requested because the carseat that you were renting would only fit in an "intermediate size." And oh, guess what, they were all out of those. So you'd have to pay extra for the mid-size. You huff, you puff, and then you say fine, whatever, just give me a damn car.
-Get to the outside office, where you have to go pick up the carseat. By this time, you're carrying the baby, who's sick of the stroller, and pushing the duffel bag in the stroller, which is ridiculously hard to maneuver with one hand. Oh, and also, you're wearing a backpack and a huge coat. Wait in another line for the carseat while the baby grouses and flings his body around.
-Get the carseat. Notice that it appears to be from approximately a decade ago. Ask if they have an instruction manual for installing it. Nope. Ask if they could help you install it. Nope. Huff. Puff. Put the carseat on top of the pile of stuff on the stroller and try to get it and the angry baby out to the car. Fail miserably. A very annoyed representative comes out to help.
-Get the bags and the stroller into the trunk, then turn attention to the carseat installation. Notice that since the thing is ancient, the locking mechanism no longer, you know, locks. Go back to ask if they have a better seat. Nope. Return to the car and realize that the only way to get the thing tight enough is to put the baby down. Except there's nowhere to put the baby down. Put him IN THE CARSEAT and then try to install it. FAIL. MISERABLY.
-Fight with the carseat to get the carrier out of the base. Put the carrier, with angry baby still inside, on the pavement. Look around every 10 seconds to make sure no suspicious, kidnapper types are lurking around. Sit on top of the base to get the stupid thing installed.
-Hope and pray that you're not in an accident because you're not entirely sure that the seat won't go flying out of the car if someone so much as looks at it sideways.
-Wrestle with the carrier again to get it back into the base. By this time, the baby is in actual hysterics. Take him out and attempt to calm him or feed him or put him to sleep. He doesn't want to eat. He doesn't want to sleep. And how dare you ask him to calm down, DO YOU KNOW WHAT HE'S JUST BEEN THROUGH?
-Put hysterical baby back in the seat and drive the 2.5 miles to the hotel, where you check in and collapse on the bed with a pile of bags, coats, and (finally sleeping) baby.
-After the baby wakes up an hour later, go to the vending machine and return to the room, only to discover that hey! The door doesn't lock! Go downstairs, where they tell you that they can't fix it, but they'll be happy to let you move to a new room. With all the stuff that you JUST UNPACKED. And the food that was JUST DELIVERED to your current room.

It was around then that I seriously began considering the rationality of just getting in the car and driving back to North Carolina with the baby on my lap.

Now the Not-So-Good

I know that yesterday, I made it out to seem that our trip was all sunshine and butterflies and maybe compared to the doom-and-gloom that I was expecting, it was mostly sunshine and butterflies. But there were definitely some moments when I thought all my fears were coming true. For example, the moment when I realized that I had lost the boarding pass to my very first flight. And the subsequent five minutes that I spent re-tracing my steps, all the while knowing that they were going to start boarding ANY MINUTE NOW. And then, when I finally figured out that I had left it at a food stall and the lady running the stall informed me that she had turned it into an airlines representative. And when I went to the representative to ask for it back, he felt it necessary to give me a long-winded lecture about the national security level (ORANGE, in case you were wondering) and how I should be more careful and meanwhile, did I mention THAT MY FLIGHT WAS ABOUT TO LEAVE?

And then, there was the moment when I realized that in the Milwaukee airport, the bathroom stalls aren't big enough to accommodate a stroller. And there was no way I was going to leave the baby in his stroller outside the stall by himself, so...well...let's just say it's a really good thing that part of the airport was completely deserted and no one came into that bathroom in the 60 seconds that I was in there.

And then, there was the whole being-too-late-to-get-my-bags-at-baggage-claim fiasco, which was compounded by the throwing-my-claim-ticket-away-too-early snafu, as a result of which I had to stand there telling the lady at baggage claim that the duffel bag RIGHT THERE was mine and if she didn't believe me, she could open it and she would find a black dress and two coats and nursing tank tops and...she stopped me at "nursing tank tops."

Of course, all of this was a walk in the park when compared to the ridiculousness that is renting a car with a baby in tow...

First, the Good

The trip to Wisconsin went surprisingly well, which is to say that the plane didn't crash, the baby didn't get kidnapped, and we're home safe and sound. It did, however, provide me with so many new experiences that they can't possibly all be contained in one blog post, so you'll probably be reading about this trip for the rest of the week, at least.

One of my biggest worries was that I wouldn't be able to juggle all the things I had with me because generally speaking, Luke hates the stroller. He will sit in it for all of 90 seconds before he starts writhing and flinging his body around like an angry salmon. And more and more, I'm starting to realize that he doesn't cry like a normal baby--the pitiful, woe-is-me kind of cry. Instead, he SHRIEKS. Loudly. Ear-piercingly. In a way that is absolutely impossible to ignore, even for a minute because if the noise continues for longer than, say, 35 seconds, it's entirely possible that the universe might implode.

But as it turned out, airports are so fascinating that he was perfectly happy to sit in the stroller, as long as we were walking around. Which meant, of course, that I walked to the gate, then to the bathroom, then back to the gate, then to a food stall, then back to the gate, just to prolong the walking portion of the trip and minimize the sitting around portion, which was of course the dangerous, at-risk-for-shrieking portion.

So we got through the walking and the juggling and the waiting and then, I was absolutely positive that he'd cry during the entire plane ride because maybe you haven't noticed, but plane rides? Include lots of sitting still in one place for extended periods of time. Luckily for me (and the 100 or so other people on each of our FOUR flights), we were sitting in the back and the noise from the engine put him right to sleep. Granted, there were short bursts of grousing here and there, but my fear that he would spend the entire flight screaming did not come true.

All this to say that the part that I was worried about the most, the airport and plane part, was a breeze. Okay. Maybe not exactly a BREEZE, but far, far easier than I expected. And also, far easier than The Part That Came After...

In For A Rough Ride

Tomorrow morning, Luke and I will be getting on a plane and heading off to Wisconsin, by way of Atlanta (ugh). By ourselves. For two days. To go to an outdoor wedding. In October. In--did I mention?--WISCONSIN. Clearly, I was under severe delusions a month ago, when I said, "Oh, a baby and a plane and cold weather? I can TOTALLY handle it! No problem!" Because here we are, one day before the trip and I can see a whole plethora of possible problems:

1. I have to juggle the baby, a stroller, a diaper bag, a duffel bag, and a carseat. That's five things. I have two hands. And it takes both of those hands just to contain the baby.
2. I might accidentally put the baby on the x-ray scanner thing.
3. I might forget to eat or drink all day long and then I wouldn't be able to feed the constantly ravenous baby.
4. The baby might scream during both flights.
5. The baby might refuse to nap. And then, he WILL scream during both flights.
6. We might end up sitting on the tarmac for 15 hours with no food or water. Or lights. Or access to a bathroom. Because clearly, the seatbelts would all lock up and we'd be trapped in our seats.
7. Planes crash. Enough said.
8. They might lose the carseat if I check it in. Or they might break it. In either case, I would then not be able to leave the airport.
9. The hotel might lose our reservation.
10. I might sit here worrying needlessly about ridiculous things instead of calling the car rental people, and then when I get there tomorrow, they might be all out of cars and then we'd have to rent a radio flyer wagon to get around town.

Five!

Luke turns five months today! And in celebration of the fact, he got his foot stuck in his mouth this morning. If you've never been seized by panic because your kid is screaming and you can't pry his big toe out from behind his gums, I highly recommend it. Over the past month, he has realized that his hands are the Best! Things! Ever! And so he uses them to grab, oh, everything. His toys. My hair. McMoose's goatee. The cat's whiskers. And of course, his feet.

He has decided that he would really like to sit up and crawl. Unfortunately for him, his body likes to play tricks on him, so in the midst of a really focused sitting session, he flops over on his side and smashes his face into the carpet. As for the crawling thing...let's just say he's working on it. He tries. Very, very hard. And yet, the result is that he looks like a very large inchworm: head down, bottom up, bottom down, head up. And after a lot of effort, he moves maybe 2 inches.

I remember from the daycare that there are some babies who think the whole world is hilarious. They laugh at every sound, they smile just to see your face. Luke? Is not one of those babies. You have to put in some serious effort to amuse this kid. And after you give it your best shot, after you play peek-a-boo and make funny noises and goofy faces, he goes hm? Is that all? Well, all right...I guess maybe you deserve a half-smile. Or at least, that's how he reacts to ME. All McMoose has to do is say "Dog!" and the kid is cracking up. But I'm not bitter...no, NOT AT ALL.

I have a thing for frogs. Hence the rocking chair. And the stuffed animal. And the t-shirt.

He inherited a giraffe costume from his cousin, and although he's going to be a (surprise, surprise!) frog for Halloween, I couldn't resist putting him in the costume one evening.

We went to the Raleigh International Festival last weekend (which, by the way was AWESOME. Great food, interesting stalls, lots of people--very fun way to spend a Sunday afternoon). Of course, Luke had to get into the spirit by wearing his Indian outfit.