To bee or not to bee

Several months ago we sat Lilia down with a couple pictures of costumes and asked her to pick what she wanted to be for Halloween.

We were sorta rooting for the bee, and in the end we got what we were looking for but in retrospect I have to admit her initial selection was the pixie and if we had paid more attention to her we might have had a smoother Halloween.

She seemed totally behind the idea in theory but when it came time to suit up the day before Halloween for an event at the El Cerrito Community Center, she looked more like an angry hornet than a bumble bee.

I figured if we wanted Halloween to be any fun at all I needed to come up with an alternate costume and fast. We got her a cowboy hat as a souvenir at the Louisiana State Fair that she’s been really into, so we whipped her into a cowgirl and she was a much happier camper. Yee Haw!

Gee thanks, American Airlines.

I should preface this by saying, we made it home safely, hooray! We had a wonderful visit but there’s no place like home <clicks heels>!

After a three and a half hour drive through pockets of pouring rain and a quick lunch with one of Adam’s old school friends (thanks again Ameen!) we arrived at DFW. We dropped off our rental car with ease, caught a bus to the terminal, breezed through airport security and got to our gate with plenty of time to spare only to find our flight was delayed an hour. Not the end of the world, and nothing our super trooper, traveling toddler couldn’t handle. We ran down her battery as best we could and when they finally began boarding our flight we got her all strapped into her handy dandy traveling car seat and waited for the pre-boarding of people traveling with small children.

We waited, and waited and waited.

Not only did they never offer a pre-boarding option for people with small children we were the last group to board. The flight, thus the overhead compartments, was completely full and the boarding agent and flight attendants were rude and anything but helpful as we tried to squeeze our way to our seats with Lilia passed out in her car seat and find a place for our bags without completely stopping the flow of traffic through the aisle. Somehow she managed to sleep through it all and we finally got someone to help us find a place for our bags, though she was clearly put out.

It’s possible we may not have been so put off by the experience had we not just had such an enjoyable trip on our American Airlines flight from SFO to DFW last week. On that flight we were pre-boarded allowing us to get Lilia and ourselves settled without affecting other passengers boarding and thus were enabled to be the savvy, self sufficient parents traveling with toddlers flight attendants dream of. Still the flight attendants on that flight were sweet and attentive and I’m confident they would have given us a hand had we needed one.

So American, what’s up with that?

Don’t eat the broccoli!

In between meeting lots of relatives, we took Lilia to the Louisiana State Fair where she got to check out all sorts of cool animals she’s never seen before like camels, wallabies, alligators, a kangaroo and a zebra. We enjoyed some of her old favorites like goats, giraffes, and an elephant, and we were able to pet and feed a llama.

Still the highlight for her may well have been the agriculture display. There was a coloring station where we rubbed crayons over plates to create leaf art and matched them to leaf posters of native trees.

A bin was set up with potatoes, carrots and onions buried in the “ground” and scoops were provided for the kids to dig them out as you would if they had actually been growing there.

They also had several vegetable bins where you could see what lettuce, green beans, tomatoes and other vegetables looked like growing on the vines. We were all particularly impressed by the broccoli display. Lilia is a fan of broccoli “trees” so I pointed it out to her and she checked it out excitedly. I was trying to get a picture of her with it, so I went around to the other side of the bin and she started to follow me so I asked her what it smelled like to get her to stay a moment longer. She sniffed it and I asked her if she liked broccoli and next thing I knew, she took a big ol’ bite of broccoli right off the display stalk, chewed it and swallowed it! We were all a bit too far to stop her, besides, she was fast and as Adam pointed out I was more concerned with getting the picture than protecting the display. Oops! Sorry kid, but don’t eat the broccoli!

Showers in Shreveport

Lilia has met about half of her southern family, eaten her way through lots of barbecue and enjoyed both rain and shine. She is in love with her older cousin Jacob, and her baby cousin James is quite taken with her. Aunts, uncles, grandparents and cousins are all pretty smitten too.

The weather forecast led me astray when it said 70’s and sunshine all week. That’s what we had for our first day but it rained all day today, and hard. Apparently that’s what we have to look forward to tomorrow too. Sadly I didn’t pack for inclement weather so we just had to run back and forth between the car all day and found Sci-Port, a really fun Children’s Science Museum, in downtown Shreveport that kept us both occupied and dry.

We had big family dinners at Aunt Debbie’s house the last two days. Sunday was so much fun and so delicious, we just decided to do it all over again today, thanks in large part to a butternut squash. I went to the store our first morning here to get some things for Lilia like milk, cheese, fresh fruit and veggies. One thing I came back with was a butternut squash and just about everyone who laid eyes on it said what in the world is that, and what are you going to do with it? No joke everyone came back for dinner tonight to see what I could do with that darn squash. No pressure. I tossed cubes of the squash with red potatoes, red onions, red, yellow and orange bell peppers, garlic, olive oil, salt and pepper and roasted it all in the oven and they just loved it. They told me afterward, we were skeptical because we don’t like [fill in any of the vegetables listed above] but gee that was good. Score one for vegetables!

We made it!

After a 7 leg journey and nearly 12 hours of travel we made it safely to Mamaw and Papaw’s house and can brag unabashedly about having a super duper traveling toddler. Trooper is an understatement, Lilia was downright fun for most of the trip. She was so excited by all the new things to experience and the various modes of transportation, she just handled each step with ease. We’ll take some of the credit for prepping her on what to expect and packing an inordinate amount of snacks as well as a few surprise activities, but really we’re just blessed with an awesome kid who can go with the flow and seems to make the best of every situation. We’re so relieved that it went so smoothly and more than a little proud of our big girl.

First Leg: Cab ride to BART station at 7:15am PST
Second Leg: BART train to MacArthur Station
Third Leg: Transfer to SFO bound train

Fourth Leg: Sky tram to our terminal

Fifth Leg: Flight from SF to Dallas

Sixth Leg: Bus ride to Car Rental Terminal

Seventh (and final!) Leg: 3.5 hour car ride from Dallas to Louisiana

Total Time Napped: 40 minutes.
Arrival at Mamaw and Papaw’s House around 9pm CST

Away we go

At long last we’re headed to Louisiana where Adam will finally get to show his baby girl off to his whole family. She’s nearly two and until now has only met her Mamaw Lori and Aunt Jami. She has great grandparents and great aunts and uncles all eager to give her a cuddle but I think her Papaw Jim may push them all aside to get to his little girl first.

Lilia is very excited for her first plane ride. We just hope the enthusiasm lasts all day and through the week for our return flight. We were feeling really nervous about it, but we’ve done all we can to prepare and now my nervousness has given way to a sense of what will be, will be. I have enough food packed for a toddler army, we have some surprise travel toys for her and some of her old standbys. I’ve described the odd things we’ll see and feel, like the security checkpoint and the pressure she’ll feel in her ears and the butterflies she may feel in her tummy. I asked her to do her best to use her words as she may feel overwhelmed, tired and confused. After scouring blogs and travel sites, I think we’re as prepared as we can be, and when it comes down to it, she adapts really well to different situations. Still, feel free to wish us luck!

A test drive of Lilia’s Traveling Toddler Car Seat Accessory, a snazzy solution to zip her through BART and the airport sans stroller. She says, and I quote, “Wheeeee!”

A passion for pumpkins

Like her mother, Lilia seems to have a strong affinity towards fall and all things pumpkin. I’ve set some smaller gourds on the hearth of our fireplace and she picks them up and brings them to us carefully saying “gourd” and describing how bumpy they are.

Last weekend we met GG and G-Lin at the coolest pumpkin patch! I think we could go there every year for the next 5 years and never do the same thing twice. They have a train ride, corn maze, zip lines, pony rides, bouncy houses, pillow jumping, and a mile of pumpkins to boot. It’s a little piece of pumpkin heaven. This year Lilia was content to bounce in the giant pumpkin, play in the toddler area and run through the field of pumpkins but I have a feeling we’ll check out the corn maze next year.

The same farm is doing a winter festival too, so it doesn’t even look like we’ll have to wait ’til next year for a train ride!

City Girls

We had a fun play date last week with two of Lilia’s San Francisco friends. We played in a toddler paradise and shared a tasty lunch.

Baby Harper had some very happy tummy, rolling and tree watching time, but she wasn’t as happy a camper on the car ride back to our house. She pretty much wailed the entire time. Lilia was sitting next to her in a forward facing car seat allowing her a perfect view and was even within reach of Harper in her rear facing seat. Lilia is a very empathetic munchkin and seems to feel others pains as if they were her own, but she was not phased by Harper’s tears. In fact, she just sang her songs and held her hand the whole way home. She was still singing “Baby Harper, Baby Harper, don’t be sad” to the tune of Frère Jacques the next day. It was too sweet and reminded me of another car ride.

When Lilia was 6 months old we went on a camping trip with Almetria and Kai. It was such a fun adventure, but that old saying about the fun being the journey and not the destination was not at all true for us. Lilia screamed for roughly half of the 5 hour drive. There was no soothing her while she was in her carseat, but Kai tried with all his might. He sang her songs, put in her pacifier, talked to her and tried to play with her as she turned purple in anger. By the time we got to camp Almetria and I were at our wits end after the longest most miserable car ride of our lives. Still, Kai didn’t seem the least bit phased and he introduced her to his friends by saying what a cute, happy baby she was and how she never cried. Almetria and I just looked at each other and laughed.

Our ride home with Patti and Harper was no more than 15 minutes long but I couldn’t help but feel proud of my little bean who tried to soothe her friend and never once got worked up herself.

BUS!

Lilia has been pretty fascinated with things that go lately from cars and trains to airplanes. Still I think her reigning favorite has to be busses. We live right off a busy street so she gets to see lots of them coming and going and makes sure to announce each one. Last week we picked up both girls from daycare and didn’t have the double stroller so we all took the bus home. Lilia didn’t want to get off at our stop because the ride was just too fun.

We can only hope this enthusiasm holds for our trip to visit Mamaw and Papaw Edgell in Louisana at the end of this month.

Awesome Dude!

Lilia mastered the climbing wall at our park today then whooshed down the slide, all of which we both thought was pretty awesome, dude!