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!