Friday, July 18, 2008

Going Back to Brooklyn

Well here we are in Knoxville, Tenessee visiting with family during a work trip. Last week a co-worker of mine from our Manhattan office called me up and asked if I could assist with a project and a client meeting that was out of town. My co-worker relayed that the out of town trip was to place not so exciting and when he told me it was Knoxville - I responded back - "I'd love to go- count me in!" Well the catch was that I needed to first go to Manhattan to meet with the internal team to discuss logistics and agenda of our out of town meeting the day before the Knoxville trip. I was more than thrilled to visit Knoxville because I have family to visit with there that I haven't seen in a long time. Since Eric is still in Iraq, traveling with a 11-month old is very tricky - especially since she is fully mobile and not wanting to be carried not even for a second.

I realized a second too late that I committed to taking a trip that I wasn't sure I could manage. I would have to drag Ava early morning to Manhattan, find a sitter just for the day and then fly out to Knoxville all in one day with a wildly independent baby, our numerous bags and sanity. Before I knew it - it was the day before we had to leave for our trip (July 15th) and after I put Ava to bed at 8:30 p.m. I still needed to finish up some project work which should take about an hour. Four hours later - I finished up my work and now I needed to pack for our trip, wash sheets for our housesitter, and clean the house. All of the sudden it was 3:30 a.m. when I realized that we needed to leave in 2 hours. Morning came and I managed to get Ava up well before her wake-up time, change her, feed her and rush us off to the airport. We managed to get on to our flight on-time and a quick 45 minutes later we landed in JFK. Carservice was on time and we were off to Brookyn where my co-worker lived and offered to share her sitter (she has a 2 year old) - I was grateful for the generosity and so we made it to Brooklyn, dropped Ava with sitter - she was too bewildered by her new surroundings that she didn't notice me sneak out. I left to head to our Manhattan office and after a few hours returned back to Brookyn.

Ava and I left Brooklyn to head to Laguardia airport and went over to skycapto check in - when I realized I had nothing to check-in. I had left our giant bag behind in Brooklyn! Ugh! What to do now...? We couldn't miss our flight so luckily because of other lessons learned I overpacked our carry-on and we had enough food, diapers and change-of clothes. Fortunately, my co-worker agreed to wait for my bag (we had to get a car service to pick up my bag and courier it over to my office) and bring it on to a later flight.

So by the time I boarded the Knoxville flight - I was exhausted mentally and physically. Ava wanted to run up and down the aisle and because I had no energy to stop her - she had a blast greeting all the passengers. Her gregarious nature made up for the lack of airline customer service from the flight attendants...she was all smiles and each passenger got a dose of "peek-a-boo." 3 hours later we made it to Knoxville. Seeing family after a long summer as a single parent -made my trip worthwhile.. they welcomed us with big hugs and the left-behind suitcase, high stress travel - was long forgotten. Nothing beats family!

Thursday, July 3, 2008

Family Outing

Before Ava came into our lives, Eric and I spent many outdoors with our dogs - hiking, camping, swimming- they were essentially our kids at the time. Now that our world revolves around Ava, our dogs are lucky we remember to feed them twice a day. Once the weekend rolls around I get a double dose of guilt from not spending enough time with the dogs and not spending enough time cleaning the house. I decided to bring the dogs and Ava to Green Lakes State Park - entertain everyone at the same time-one of our favorite places to visit in Syracuse. Luckily we have an SUV (hybrid of course) with enough room to fit two dogs a baby, stroller, cooler, and other miscellaneous stuff. The dogs were thrilled to finally go for a car ride - and Ava was equally happy to have company in the back seat. Of course when we arrived to the Park, she was covered in doggy drool. We were meeting friends at the Park for a BBQ picnic and a hike to the lake afterwards.

Watching two wiley dogs and holding a baby was a bit much, especially since Tazu kept running circles around everyone while he was tied to a tree which caused many kids to fall like flies after he clotheslined them with his retractable leash - I decided to let Ava roam around in the grass. She loved her new found freedom and was excited to crawl on the grassy surface. She was intrigued by the texture of the grass and enjoyed exploring the new landscape. After our picnic we decided to head down to the Lake and let the kids swim as we had 5 kids under the age of four in our group that needed to be worn down. I decided to tie one dog to my waist and hold the other dog and push the umbrella stroller with Ava in. This plan worked out well until we came to a steep hill with trail steps leading to the Lake. What a bummer! After attempting to go down a few steps with stroller and dogs - I decided to let one dog and hold on the other while carrying the stroller with Ava in it down the hill - each step I took I couldn't see where I was going except down. At the time it seemed like a good idea until I made it half way down and realized what a bad decision this actually was - I could easily lose balance and tumble down the hill with two dogs. I finally made it and to my big surprise Ava was a sleep. How she slept through the awkward movements and me screaming at my dogs to slow down.

She is proving to quite the trooper lately and hope she will continue to surprise us!