Traveling

The new year has started in earnest. I’m traveling this week in San Jose. Thankfully it is a short flight and the weather here is pretty nice. It was a “roasty” 60 degrees today, but should dip down to a chilly 40 tonight. I braved this trip with only sweaters and am a tiny bit sorry I didn’t bulk up a bit. (There was some crazy dude in the outdoor pool last night...it was NOT warm enough for that activity.)
Alaska Airlines changed their available flights out of San Jose and instead of getting home at 5:45 tomorrow I’ll be landing at 9:00. The difference is only a few hours, but it does make for a long day. Oh well, it’s nice that our home is near the airport and I don’ t have to add on a 45 minute freeway trip on top of the flight time. I didn’t travel enough last year to retain my “elite” flyer status and the real bummer is the added ten minutes it takes to get off the airplane when we land. For some reason those ten minutes feel a lot longer than any other part of the flight. I’d like to complain about the loss of my “elite” status, but it really means that I spent lots and lots of time at home in 2011. 2012 will see the return of my status but thankfully I will not hit the “super elite” status. I frankly don’t want to travel that much.

It was Mom’s birthday on Sunday and I used my go to birthday gift generator (Amazon.com) to mail her two movies – the recommended hit “The Help”, which I really enjoyed and I know many of you read the book. I also sent her the documentaries “Babies”. My parents watched both movies yesterday and I heard that the Babies movie was such a hit that it was going to get a second viewing in short order. So – yeah!

Monday night we (the work peeps) went to dinner at an “Asian Fusion” restaurant and we filled our table with entrees from Thailand, India and Japan. It should have been flavor collisions, but alas I wanted to tuck tidbits of the meal into my shirt pockets to eat later in the evening. I know that licking the bowls during a business dinner is slightly unacceptable, so I had to hold myself back.
Jason is “solo” parenting while I’m away and of course is doing just fine. I’m sure they both miss me as much as I miss them. Jason does a nice job of sending me a photo every day to keep me in the loop. Yesterday we went over Lucy’s day care sheet. Each day the ‘teachers’ at ‘school’ fill out a sheet to let us know when she ate, when she slept (never) and all diaper changes. Usually the sheet comes home with notes like “Lucy ate green beans!” or “Lucy needs more pants”. Monday it was “Lucy pooped at 6:30, 7:45, 10:15, 12:25, 3:10 and 4:10 today”. May I just say – WOW, that is a lot of poop. We’ve been managing a semi-industrial sized diaper rash and all the #2 does not help the healing process. I do think it’s nice that she’s so relaxed at “school”, and I guess I’m paying a lot of money for those diaper changes so I shouldn’t feel at all guilty about them.

When Jason picked up miss Lucy from ‘school’ yesterday he was asked when I was coming home. He felt a little judged so his response was “Why, am I doing something wrong?” The response was that of course he’s not doing anything wrong but that Lucy seemed “off” and seemed to be missing Mama. He seemed a tiny bit indignant that they would suggest that she would miss me considering how little awake time she has at home during the week. (1 hour in the morning and maybe 90 minutes after she gets home.) Part of me agrees that it’s crazy that she would notice in that timeline that I’m not around, however the idea that she would notice does my heart good. My guess is that when I get her up tomorrow she’ll be clingy and snuggly. I won’t mind that. The only bummer of not having middle of the night feedings anymore is that I don’t get to snuggle with her until tomorrow morning. It would be a bad mama moment to wake her up when I get home, no matter how much I miss her.

Other than that, not much is going on. We are planning a trip to Long Beach in the near future. I’m looking forward to solo time with my guy and the peanut. Doing it away from home is a special challenge because of all the stuff we have to bring, but also allows us to ignore all the things we should be doing instead of just hanging out with each other. We’ll be having dinner one night with Connie and Kendall – a couple that I know from high school. They married in 1987 or 1988 and have managed to stay together all these years. They are super nice and it will be great to reconnect. They started their family early on and have at least one son in college (or was in college and is now exploring other options) regardless, my point is that the only time I question our decision to do the parenting thing is when I hang out with people my exact age who started their journey 20 years ago… I know that my journey is the right one and I had many wonderful experiences prior to bringing Miss Lucy into the world and am enjoying my time with her . I have no regrets – it’s just the only time I feel like an “older mom” is when hanging out with my peers and they are talking about their college aged kids.