Thanksgiving 2010 - Family Road Trip

Sam and Mommy get some alone time at a Kalamazoo park

As Thanksgiving weekend was coming to a close we pulled off the highway to get gas and TT continued on her way home towards Green Bay. I explained to Sam that TT was going on Highway 43 and we were going home on Highway 94.

"I don't want to go on 94," he cried. "I want to go on 43. I want to go on 43!"

After five days of having TT traveling by his side, he was understandably upset.


Traveling with two small children certainly has its challenges, but thankfully Baby Sister seems to have the same easy-traveler gene that her brother has, and she was mostly content in the car seat (except for the last half hour in which Mommy pushed the limits of how long Eva could go without nursing). And although we might have been able to survive our long road trip without TT, having her along was definitely a gift... especially at 3am on the second night when I was able to hand off a crying infant and snuggle up with my comatose toddler in one room while TT fascinated Eva with her glittering gold watch in the other room. Or during dinner the last night when TT spread out a smorgasboard of goodies from Whole Foods including cream of wild mushroom soup, delicious macaroni and cheese ("I love it, TT! I love it!"), and an $8 guacamole that was worth every penny.

During our road trip through Chicago and on to Michigan, it was wonderful to see TT and "Unkin Ron" and Aunt Judy and "the daddies" and their families. We will definitely go back for holidays in the future. I loved that Sam was able to be part of a big, loud, crazy family... just like what we had in Copemish when we were all kids. I was exhausted and sleep-deprived and impatient with my children (and my undeserving mother) and occasionally incapable of forming coherent thoughts. I was constantly pulled in multiple directions by a demanding toddler who needed cheese or a juice box or a trip to the potty while his sister needed feeding or changing or burping or bouncing. But the trip was fantastic and worth every muscle spasm in my back and ache in my knees and hips.



It was a nearly constant whirlwind of commotion so it's hard to remember all the details, but I do remember the way we rushed in to Kelly's house for our lunch break and rushed out and barely had time to talk to my single friends before we hit the road again.

And I remember the way Sam yelled at anyone that got between our car and TT's black Saab ("Get out of the way, white car! Get off our road!")

Some other snippets of Sammy Wisdom:

On seeing TT's car again after losing her in the traffic for a few minutes... "Mommy, I love TT so much I could eat her up. And then she would be in my tummy until I pooped her out."

On seeing four women in bikinis on a Chicago tanning spa billboard... "Mommy, look at those girls. They need to get dressed."

On seeing a semi-truck carrying a load of porta-potties... "Mommy, look at the truck full of poopy things."

After TT drove through the toll booth ahead of us and paid our toll for us... "TT did it! She helped us! Yay!!!"


After visiting Aunt Judy and Uncle Ron our first night there... "I love Unkin Ron. And I like Aunt Judy but I'm shy of her. And I like the daddy in the blue, but I'm shy of him too."

After Mommy pulled off at the first Racine exit and then complained about the highway engineers that fooled her into driving several miles to the gas station... "Those cars over there are nice, Mommy. They're not bad. They didn't do it."

On seeing a semi-truck carrying four speedboats angled on top of each other... "Mommy, look at those boats. Who broke those? Some bad guy did that and his Mommy had to put him on the naughty mat because that is bad. That is very bad."


I have so many memories from our five days with TT and our two days with the Holmes Clan, and those moments will have to be shared in another post. For now I share...

Things I learned about traveling with small children:

A bottle of formula may buy you an extra hour or two of sleep in a hotel room, but the diapers during the next 24 hours may not be worth it.

Even with only a hotel shampoo bottle, an empty pill container, a comb, and a ladle from the kitchen, a toddler will gladly entertain themselves in the hotel bathtub for a very long time and still whine when you want them to get out.

When an infant starts screaming at the top of her lungs at every toll booth stop, you can quickly calm her by reaching around and sticking your left pinky in her mouth while you drive 80 miles an hour with your right hand. (And you thought cell phones were unsafe distractions.)

A boy that gets to run for just half an hour before getting in the car is a relatively content traveler, and Chicago Tollway Oasis stops have McDonald’s playlands that don’t require you to eat their “food.”

There is a reason that women are notoriously bad at keeping their hotel rooms clean compared to men. If you have to clean up at home every single day, a hotel room is a good place to let the popcorn spilled on the living room floor lay and the juice splattered onto the kitchen wall drip. Maybe our family should stay in hotels more often just to get a break.

There is another reason not to regularly feed your children garbage like fruit roll-ups and goldfish crackers and little packages of chocolate cake donuts from the gas station... because then they are extremely happy and quiet when you hand that garbage to them in the back seat on a long road trip.

You really never need as much sleep as you think you do. Who would want to sleep through any of this?!?

Thanks to all those who shared their holiday with us and made this Thanksgiving road trip possible: Uncle Ron and Aunt Judy, Michael and Michelle and Malia and Alyssa, Johnny and Lisa and Jack, Julie and Doug and Taylor, Kelly and Missy, and most especially TT! We love you all.

For more family photos and memories go here, but for a dance video that shouldn't be missed, watch below.

My New Best Friend

"Make the pump your best friend," Carol said.

We were sitting in a quiet exam room in the Gunderson Lutheran Pediatrics Clinic, and Carol was the lactation nurse who had just weighed Sam before and after I nursed him. Despite me stripping him down to just a diaper and flicking the bottoms of his feet and blowing on his face, he had slept through most of the 45 minute nursing session and only gained an ounce.

If you skip the pre-natal breastfeeding classes (as many of my friends had told me to) you miss the important fact that babies lose weight before they leave the hospital. And if you're breastfeeding and waiting for your milk to come in, newborns can lose a lot of weight that first week. Sam had been 8 pounds 6 ounces at birth, and by the time we left the hospital 4 days after my c-section, he weighed only 7 pounds 3 ounces. His significant weight loss had triggered the need for daily and then weekly weight checks at the clinic.

"He's not going to do the work, so you're going to have to," Carol said.

Sam was 4 weeks old and he still wasn't up to his birth weight. He was what they call a "sleepy, lazy nurser." He was more interested in sleep than eating. And at that point, quite frankly, so was his Mommy. He was gaining weight, but it was slow, and I was tiring of the amount of work that each feeding required because he just wouldn't stay awake. I was on the verge of giving up and switching to formula.

A friend had told me that breastfeeding was like marriage. It required commitment to stick with it when it was hard because it would be hard at some point. Amen.

I have been thinking about those frequent visits with Carol a lot lately since Eva seems to take after her big brother. She too lost a lot of weight before we left the hospital. She too would rather sleep than eat.

When we walked into the clinic for Eva's first weight check and lactation consultation 3 weeks ago, Carol greeted me in the lobby and smiled and said "How are you?! You look fantastic." It had been almost 3 years since she'd seen me, but she had been a frequent source of support for many weeks. She said it seemed like just yesterday since I'd been there with Sam. We reminisced about those early days, talked about Sam's good-natured temperament, and developed an action plan to get Eva gaining weight more quickly than her big brother had.

"I'm making the pump my best friend already," I told Carol, and she laughed.

We've been in for weight checks several times over the 4 and 1/2 weeks since Eva was born. Every few days Carol and I have discussed the issues and reassessed and adjusted the plan, and every week we have once again reminisced about the early weeks with my other sleepy lazy nurser. Last week Eva's weight had gone up an entire pound from the previous week, but that was because I was doing the work... a lot of pumping and bottle feeding. This week was the first real weight check of just nursing, no bottles. I am thrilled to know that she's up another 11 ounces since last week, and she's now almost 11 pounds. Great news. But I have to admit I was a little disappointed that Carol had the day off today. She wasn't there to once again gush with support and encouragement and assure me that my commitment had paid off, that we were going to make breastfeeding work again, that the pump doesn't have to be my best friend any more, and that my sleepy, lazy nurser has definitely woken up.

Steep Learning Curve

Thanks to a 65-degree Indian Summer Day, Eva gets to enjoy the outdoors too

Well, we've survived the first two weeks of Mommy being a single mother of two little ones. "Survived" being the key word. Our first night alone after Kelly left was not one of the best nights of my life (or Sammy's). I very quickly learned that although it's possible (and even easy sometimes) to manage two of them at once, there will be moments when the very different needs of a toddler and a newborn will compete, and being the mommy of two requires frequent compromise. Let the baby cry or let the toddler crawl up the bookcase? Let the baby cry or let the toddler dig through the pantry and pour bunny crackers all over the kitchen floor? Let the baby cry or let the toddler take every single alphabet refrigerator magnet off the refrigerator and pile them in the foyer? Let the baby cry or let the toddler jump on mommy's queen-sized pillowtop mattress? Let the baby cry or let the toddler go out into the garage and ride circles around the car with his trike? Let the baby cry or let the toddler empty his bookshelves all over the floor?

Bundled up for a caterpillar collecting mission

Every day it gets a little easier and I figure out strategies to manage the most challenging moments... like bedtime and dinner time... and the learning curve is steep. I'm learning to let go of the need to have any sort of semblence of a clean house, and I'm learning to let the chaos build all day. The toys can be stacked (or kicked into a corner when I'm really tired) after the toddler is in bed. The dishes can pile up in the sink. The dirty clothes can overflow the laundry basket. The spilled applesauce and yogurt can stay on the table for a few hours. The short amount of time I have alone with my little man (who has recently lost his daily alone time with Mommy) is much, much more important than any housework. Sammy and I are both adjusting (and one of us has to be frequently reminded that some rules and boundaries haven't changed) and learning this new way of life, but I wouldn't change it for the world. I've relaxed a lot of my own rules about TV and snacking and bedtime and dinner time in order to maintain my own sanity, and Sammy and I both contiune to learn new things every single day. Some of the things I've learned during the last two weeks:

A sticker chart goes a long way towards blackmailing a toddler to do what you want him to do (rather than yelling at the top of your lungs and teaching him new words that he will repeat at daycare).

Sammy gets another sticker for cleaning up his toys

A Bug's Life is an excellent movie for a 2 and 1/2 year-old boy who has lost interest in Dora and Fresh Beat Band, and when the baby needs to be fed, it's okay to give in to the request to watch it again. And again. And again.

The child whose Mommy wasn't going to let him watch too much TV

A Babybjorn carrier is essential to having hands free so that you can build the toddler his Tonka dumptruck stunt bridge while also meeting the infant's need to be held 24/7.

The big new toy Sam earned by filling up 4 rows of his sticker chart

If you can get past the fear of choking and the drooling gooey mess on the front of his t-shirt, Tootsie Rolls are a great way to keep a toddler quiet for several minutes.

You can tolerate really disgusting, sour smelling bad breath exhaling directly into your face in the middle of the night if it means both children are sound asleep.

If the baby makes the sounds of filling her diaper while she's sleeping, let her keep sleeping. She will wake soon enough as it is, and even when she's awake she'll go through 3-4 diapers while on the changing table.

When you wake up after falling asleep in front of the TV during midnight feedings, put the TV back to Nick Jr before turning it off, and teach the toddler to turn the TV on by himself.

Make up songs about everything. A defiant toddler will enjoy running to the bathroom or getting dressed for daycare or cleaning up his dinner dishes more if he can sing about it.

Dinner time tip: Amy's organic frozen dinners. Healthy and delicious and it takes 5 minutes to get food on the table when the toddler is screaming about how hungry he is and can he PLEASE have some skittles from trick-or-treating because he really NEEDS them!

A bathtub full of toys and bubbles and floating letters and bathtub crayons is a good way to keep a toddler in one place and out of trouble when a newborn needs to be nursed.

Friends that stop by during or after dinner time should be encouraged to stay and hold the baby until after the toddler is in bed. Toddler bedtime is MUCH easier if the toddler gets Mommy's full attention.

Tara snuggles with Baby Sister so Sammy and Mommy can get some much-needed alone time

Write everything down as it occurs to you because your brain has become mush.

A bouncy seat that can be placed on top of the kitchen counter (or the bathroom counter or the dining room table) may buy Mommy enough hands-free minutes to cook or eat or take a shower.

If he is wearing a dark colored shirt that won't show the drool stains (and even if he's not), Halloween candy or homemade cookies with blue frosting and sprinkles make great blackmailing ammunition when your toddler doesn't want to get into his carseat.

Sam helps by taste-testing the cookie dough

Pump, pump, pump when you can during the day so that you can have extra bottles of milk around to make dinnertime and bedtime easier for all three of you.

A sandbox full of diggers is great for keeping a little man happy no matter what the weather is like.

It doesn't matter how badly you need to get up and pee if you have the warm arm of a snoring toddler wrapped around your waist on one side of you while your upper arm is falling asleep from the weight of a sleeping newborn on the other side. Stay there and revel in that moment.

A sweet, gentle big brother moment

Third Shift

Kelly watches Eva so Mommy can get a break

The night before Kelly left our home after a week of cooking and cleaning and holding baby and playing with Sam, the three of us sat at the dining room table eating delvery pizza.

"I'm going to be sad when Kelly leaves," I said. "She takes such good care of you and Baby Sister."

Sam used his teeth to pull the cheese off his pizza and started to talk with a mouthful,

"Her take care of you," he said.

Amen.




The week Kelly spent here was the longest time we'd lived together since our trip to Kauai a decade ago or our two years sharing dorm rooms in Kronsage Hall in Madison back in the mid-80's. And a lot has changed in both our lives since then. But some things haven't changed including our love and respect for each other and our genuine enjoyment of our time together. I probably slept less than I should have because Kelly and I spent hours just talking while Sam was at daycare and Eva slept on one of our chests, but it was a week I'll never forget, a week for which I will always be grateful, and a week that Sam will probably continue to talk about for years.









In the car on the way home from daycare a few days ago, we were looking for ducks on the water when Sam announced out of nowhere, "I'm sad that Kelly leaved." And then we talked about when he might see her again. Soon, I hope.

See more photos here.

Second Shift

Second shift. TT took over caretaking duties for my second week of recovery. Sammy loved having a new baby sister, but he really loved having his TT here for an entire week. Trips to the store and around the block and to the children's museum while Mommy spent time trying to get Baby Eva to eat.

More photos here.