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!

Good Morning Spider Webs

We’ve had a spider explosion here lately and my spider-lovin’ girl is in heaven. For the past few days we’ve been beginning our mornings with a walk around our front yard to watch all the spiders spin their new webs. Lilia wakes up asking to go see the spider webs and goes to bed asking to go in the back yard to say goodnight to the moon and the stars. I have to say it’s the sweetest way to start and end each day.

Mommy do work

Adam took Lilia into daycare one day last week, something I almost always do. When he told Lilia about the change up, she looked at him and said, “Mommy do work.” then hopped in her stroller and away they went, barely pausing to give me my good-bye hug and kiss.

Multitasking isn’t as easy to do now as it was when she was little but we still manage to make it work. What I don’t understand is how my itty bitty baby is now big enough to communicate, yeah, I get it, Mom has to work so Dad’s taking me to school, let’s go, I want to play with my friends.

Super Scrubbing Sunday

Yesterday was dedicated to making the kitchen messy as I tried out some new recipes. The biggest hit was a double batch of whole wheat waffles that were tasty when they were fresh but were even better when we took them out of the freezer and toasted them up for breakfast this morning.

After tearing the house apart on Saturday, it was time to put it back together today. It’s not like spending the entire day scrubbing the house from top to bottom is anyone’s idea of fun but it sure does make for a blissful Sunday evening. I love the feeling of a clean house, clean sheets, clean laundry, clean baby (it was a bath night) and even a clean outdoors! I scrubbed down the front porch while Adam mowed the backyard. Lilia was a helper with the swiffer and duster and was fairly tolerant of our super scrubbing Sunday, though she’s still not a fan of the vacuum cleaner. I took her to the park in the morning while Adam worked on the kitchen and he took her to the park in the afternoon while I scrubbed the bathroom.

Now all that’s left to do is to take bets on how long the clean will last.

Bye Bye Stars

Lilia has been fascinated with all things sky as of late. It started with us telling her all about airplanes to help prepare her for our trip to visit Adam’s family in Louisiana towards the end of October. She spots them in the sky and says airplane a few seconds before Adam or I can register them and even calls them out from indoors if she hears their engine now.

She also has books and puzzles that reference the moon and stars. She’s been saying moon and stars and it occurred to us, she did not have much, if any, first hand knowledge of them so for the last couple nights we’ve gone outside stargazing before bed. She points and calls out the moon and stars and when we head in for bed she says Bye Bye Stars.