Epic Roadtrip Installment #4

After the cabin, Robin and I headed back to Forest Lake to spend some time with some friends and hang out in St. Paul and Minneapolis, the cities we love so dearly. We got together with Jess and Sarah and their beautiful and good-natured little boy Sam. Sam and I became super good friends... it took us awhile that he wasn't getting fresh--he just liked the way my shirt felt!








We spent an great family day in St. Paul, having lunch at Moe's Burgers as a belated Father's Day gift to my dad and checking out the Minnesota Children's Museum, using our membership to the Austin Children's Museum. The two museums have reciprocity, so Robin, Lydia, and I had free admission!

Lydia's not so sure about this... but Grandpa loves it!


Building with the ice blocks in the climate-themed toddler's area. It was adorable!











My dad shares season tickets to the Twins, and I was lucky enough to get to join him for a game at Target Field!!! It was absolutely gorgeous. I love the Twins and loved watching them play in the Metrodome, but this stadium takes sports spectatorship to a whole new level. It is amazing, and in my opinion, should top the list of things people should do when they visit Minneapolis. This was the view from my dad's seats, looking down the First Baseline. The stadium sits right downtown.









Before we headed to Madison, Robin, Lydia, and I enjoyed breakfast with a college friend, Dave, his wife Rachel, and their adorable daughter, Hazel at Trotter's in St. Paul. Hazel was so good-natured and sweet, and we loved getting to know Rachel and catching up with Dave.


Hazel gives Lydia a kiss...


We also enjoyed spending time with good friends, Kayla and Casey, and their main men, Stefan and Mike, and we loved checking out their neighborhoods. Kayla fed us a delicious summer meal and introduced me to the amazing thing that is a mint gin fizz and took us on a walk in her neighborhood and showed us her community garden. Casey and Mike also made a delicious meal and we loved seeing their home and neighborhood. Both nights, as we drove home, we talked about how we can see ourselves heading North in the relatively near future. We just love so many things about Minnesota so much.

Next up: Madison with Grandpa Dale, Gramma Mree, and Aunt Elise

If You Just Couldn't Wait...

Updated photos are on Picasa. I realize that I have neglected the blog during our travels, but we are truly relaxing and enjoying some time away. My shutterbug habit has reached new heights; we had to purchase more Picasa space, so while I apologize for the delay, there are now sixteen gigabytes of storage just waiting to be filled with photos of Lydia. You can visit Picasa here or hang out and watch the slideshow to see what we've been up to during the past couple weeks!

Safe and Sound

Lydia, my mom and I arrived safely in Forest Lake after driving from Austin. We left Thursday morning and arrived Friday night.

Robin and I are pretty good road-trippers if I say so myself, and often times we end up opting to drive home rather than fly so that we have a car while here. This makes it much easier to get around Minneapolis and St. Paul, as well as drive to Madison. This paired with airfare prices that are only getting more expensive meant hitting the road.

We took our time, and everything went well. One of us sat in the back with Lydia the whole time, we packed a crate with books and toys, and listened to music. Somehow, we managed to drive across the country with zero meltdowns from Lydia. She is a trooper; I am so proud of her.

Currently, I have no way of uploading photos from my camera, but I am eager to post about the 4th (3rd?) of July parade I went to this morning, meeting Drew Q. for the first time and spending some time with his wonderful parents, and just how much Grandma and Grandpa H. love their granddaughter. Until then, I will try to take iPhone pictures to post and my little Top Five list will have to hold you over!

Top Five Most Important Things to Bring Along on a Roadtrip with a Toddler

5.) Book on tape for naptime. My choice for this ride was Eating Animals by Jonathan Safron Foer.
4.) Cooler of delicious protein-filled snacks for all. This limited our mealtime stops. (See #3) This included cheese, peanut butter, nuts and trail mix, and whole milk for Lydia.
3.) A bib and solid-ish foods. We did lots of car eating so that stops could be limited to diaper changes and running around.
2.) Pacifier or food with which to pacify. We threw all rules on pacifier time and portion control to the wind. A non-crying baby = a happy mama.
1.) As many books as possible. Seriously, we brought 20. Why? Because "Oh, the wonderful sounds Mr. Brown can do..." is a lot to take on round 20 or 30 when cooped up in a car with nowhere to go.

Ladies in New York

I have two very special girlfriends from college. Elise and Anna lived two doors down from me in Middlebrook Hall sophomore year, and we lived together during our Junior and Senior years. This weekend, Anna kicked off the last year of her twenties, so Elise and I crashed in Anna and her husband Steve's adorable Manhattan apartment, and we had a wonderful four days.

Together, we...
...took the Staten Island Ferry and checked out Lady Liberty...
...ate a cupcake a day (almost). This one is from Magnolia Bakery, eaten while on the Sex and the City Bus Tour...
...Munched on vegan and gluten-free sweets from Babycakes Bakery...
...checked out Brooklyn and the Brooklyn Flea Market...
..walked across the Brooklyn Bridge...
...found my New York fashion confidence and rocked an outfit far more 80s than I would ever have the courage to wear in Austin. Look closely and you'll notice the knock-off RayBans. If you could see my cropped leggings and woven black flats, you would understand the magnitude of this phenomenon...
...and walked through Central Park, karaoked the Dixie Chicks, laughed at Avenue Q, and ate an entire loaf of bread and wedge of Brie cheese, all of which I decided to enjoy sans camera.

It is wonderful to have such longstanding girlfriends. This is the longest period of time we have spent together since we shared an apartment, and it was so wonderful to pick up where we left off.
For more photos, hopefully to be updated with photos from Anna and Elise's cameras, check out the slideshow here.

Travel Tips

Lydia's traveling last week was picture perfect. Without gushing too much, I couldn't have even hoped for a better solo traveling experience than we had, especially considering that neither of the flights were direct; both had layovers in Charlotte. Lydia slept on every leg of our journey, and she whimpered for approximately thirty seconds on one flight.

A few things I did that worked really well:

--I brought a little cooler that had a strap that can clips around the strap of my diaper bag. This way I didn't have to dig into anything for Lydia's food and drink. Both the diaper bag and the cooler were able to stow under my seat.

--I borrowed an idea from my friend Kelsey at Adventure Mama and tied ribbons to Lydia's toys and cups. Lydia is big on throwing things on the floor, and I didn't want to deal with having to catch anything flying into the aisle or having to lean into another person's lap to fish her toys from the ground. This saved me approximately twenty trips into the aisle. I tied one end of the ribbon to the toy or around the cup and made a loop on the other end of the ribbon to go around my wrist. Flight attendants on two of the four flights complimented me on this little scheme, saying they had never seen it before but would start mentioning it to other flight attendants and flying mamas. Great idea, Kelsey!

--I went with anything that kept Lydia happy and didn't create a huge mess or ruckus. For example, when Lydia became fascinated with a little box with a lid, we spent a good 40 minutes hiding a cheerio in the box, putting the lid on, encouraging Lydia to remove the lid, letting her eat the cheerio, and then putting the lid back on. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat... Repe....

Travel Tips

**For those of you who come here for a baby fix and could really careless about the tips/baby care stuff, I will post lots of pictures later today. No worries!!**

After coming back from our two-plus week travels, I have some new and improved ideas about what made traveling go very smoothly for us. Some things won't work for everyone, and I realize that, but, without further ado, my top five travel tips!

1.) We ditched the stroller and brought our ergobaby carrier instead. Never once did I think to myself, "I wish we had a stroller!" Lydia is happy in the Ergo, and it left our hands free. She strolled on the beach with Grandma Marie in the Ergo, ran through the airport on Daddy in the Ergo, you name it. We definitely made the right choice.

2.) White Noise. I have a white noise app on my iPhone, and it was really nice to have. It blocked out conversations outside of our room during the day and the roosters during the night. (Yes, kids, our beautiful ocean-view house was located right next to a man who raised roosters for cock fighting. Cock-fighting roosters must have an extra-special gene that causes them to crow 24-7 rather than just when the sun came up.) It also made it easier for Robin and I to sneak in and go to bed or get things, because the white noise blocked out the sounds we made. Thanks, White Noise Lite app!!

3.) Sleep training. Here is the part that I know is not for everyone. Lydia's ability to soothe herself and fall asleep on her own was invaluable. Despite the changes in schedule and environment, the girl pretty much stuck to her two-a-day nap schedule (give or take an hour or so and missing a nap here or there). She was able to fall asleep in her pack-and-play, and all was well. I never spent more time putting her down than I do at home, unlike her trip to Minnesota this summer when we were still rocking her to bed.

4.) Toys. We brought as many toys as we could possibly fit into our suitcase. This was particularly nice on the plane when we had things for her to play with. I read in an article that parents often forget toys on the airplane. That would be a huge oops!

5.) House vs. hotel. This isn't always an option, but I was so grateful that Robin's mom planned our vacation at a rented house. It allowed us to put Lydia down for a nap and sit by the pool, on the veranda, or downstairs in the living room. Great call, Marie!

I wish I would have...

1.) Brought her baby monitor. We don't use it in the house anymore because when Lydia wakes up from her nap, the girl lets us KNOW! It would have been really nice for those occasions when we were outside by the pool, because we would have been able to hear her without having to go inside and check. I know the baby monitor will be making it's comeback when summer comes and L naps while I sit outside on the porch and read a book (aka sun myself).

2.) Brought a hat for Lydia. We forgot. Oops. Poor girl sported a mean sunscreen hairdo for the week.

3.) Continued pumping at least once a day even though I was nursing her through the whole break. Not doing this has caused my body to majorly rebel against pumping, which I will talk about in a later post.

Tidbits

We are vacationing in Puerto Rico with Robin's parents and sisters. It is amazingly beautiful, and we are having a wonderful time. We are keeping our picasa photos updated, so to check out our adventures, go to www.picasaweb.com/robinganser.

Chicago

We safely returned from Chicago on Sunday evening had a really great trip. Lydia traveled like a champ. She cried during two of the four descents. Take-offs were fine, and she fussed for about 2 minutes during one flight while she was trying to get comfortable to go to sleep. During the five days on the road, Lydia met her Aunt Elise, hung out in Wisconsin with Grandma Mree and Grandpa Dale, kicked it in Chicago with Auntie Britty and Uncle Mike (aka Padrino), and spent an evening with Grandma Jeanette and Great Aunt Phyllis. To say she was absolutely perfect would be stretching it--all of the new faces and places paired with teething tired her out, but I am pretty proud of how well she fared. She's such a good, resilient little girl.

So here are a handful of photos of our trip.

Lydia with Grandpa Dale
Lydia with Grandma Mree
Robin and I all gussied up after the wedding. (Please note the REAL bowtie that Robin learned how to tie.)
The Newlyweds! Doesn't she look fantastic?!?!
Lydia hanging at Beans and Bagels in ChicagoDanced up a storm with Auntie Brittany and El Padrino aka Uncle Mikey (at not one, but TWO wedding dances.)

And reunited with good friends.

Home Sweet Home

Robin, Lydia, and I have arrived safely back in Austin after being gone for nearly two weeks. Our trip was as packed as it could have been, and like always, I still feel like there were a lot of people we didn't see! I will post pictures as soon as possible, but I wanted to talk about the things we did that made our time in the car go so smoothly.

--One of us sat in the back seat with Lydia nearly the entire trip. There were a few periods when she was sleeping pretty soundly that I crawled up into the passenger seat to talk with Robin, but for the most part, it was a lot easier to travel with one of us in back.

--We started both long car rides (to MN from Austin and from WI back) with three servings worth (14 ozs. or so) of milk in bottles in a cooler. Lydia eats very frequently (a result of sleeping for such a long stretch through the night), so I would feed her a bottle roughly every 2.5 hrs. and then pump afterwards to replace as much of the milk she drank as possible. This was made a lot easier by the facts that 1.) Lydia doesn't mind taking bottles cold instead of warm and 2.) she has no issue taking them from me, even though I primarily feed her by nursing her. (A big shout-out to the Medela Swing pump, which can be powered by AA batteries. While I much prefer the Medela Pump Instyle at home and work, the Swing was perfect for travel, both because of the AA batteries and its size.) Thank goodness for tinted windows.

--Lydia slept in her Pack 'n' Play. We learned along the way that this worked best when she was in a room by herself just like at home. (Lydia's been sleeping in her own room since she was about 2 weeks old.) We followed her bedtime routine--undress, change diaper, bath or sponge bath, nurse, rock) as closely as possible, and she feel back into her regular sleep habits pretty quickly. I think the biggest sideline of her sleep wasn't the travel but our failure to remember her swaddle-me blanket. (We bought a new one in the next size up, but it was a bit too big and didn't work as well. We figured out how to work it a few nights in.) Her penchant for sleeping alone meant that when staying in a hotel on the way home, Lydia slept in... drum roll... the bathroom. Yes, we set up the Pack 'n' Play in the bathroom. This allowed us a good night of sleep, plus the opportunity to veg out in front of the TV after Lydia fell asleep.

--We were lucky enough to stumble upon a hotel with very affordable suites, rather than a basic room. This meant we had a full refrigerator and freezer, as well as a microwave. While this trip didn't require a microwave or stove, the kitchen was very nice to have. (A shout-out to Candlewood Suites, which offered a room with a full kitchen for $70 via hotels.com!)

--We stopped to change diapers, fill up the gas tank, and get food to go. Nothing else. This meant we made both trips in about the same time we have done in the past sans baby, and the period of time when Lydia was "done" and fussy, but we still had time in the car before we reached our destination was kept to a minimum. In this same vein, we did the "long haul" drive on the way to MN, and split the drive back to Austin from WI. I think this was best for all of our well-being.

--The iPhone was invaluable. It gave us directions, allowed us to find restaurants and coffee shops, as well as book a hotel room on the road. It also allowed me to play very addictive games while sitting with a sleeping Lydia in the back seat, post to the blog, and keep up to speed on the Michael Jackson ordeal.

I grew up with the statement that God doesn't give you more than you can handle. Apparently, we can't handle much. Robin and I were lucky to have a very easy, well-adjusted baby. Sometimes I find myself anxious that Lydia's ridiculously easy temperament and good health is a sign that things will be difficult down the road. (Adolescence? Oh no!) I don't want to brag (Read: Bragging ahead), but she was an amazing little traveler on this ridiculous endeavor. Two adults, one three month old, one shih-tzu, 2705 miles, and 42 hours in the car: Mission Accomplished.

On the Road: Installment Seven

Lydia's first hotel stay=success!!

543 miles and 9 hours to go.


-- Post From My iPhone

On the Road: Installment Six

Robin and I have been enjoying our stay in Madison so much that we decided to extend it a bit. We'll be heading out tomorrow and have decided we're not even going to attempt the one-shot trip we made on our way to Minnesota. Neither of us have the energy, and we don't want to push our luck with cross-country travel and Lydia.

Lydia has been a real trooper this entire trip. There have been tons of new faces and lots of outings--quite the contrast to the routine we'd established in Austin that involved mostly just Robin and me and maybe one outing a day. She has let us know a few times that she is "done" and overwhelmed, but even that has usually been easily remedied with quiet time and a nap. I had no idea how different it would be trying to manage a visit home with a baby. Visiting Minnesota has always presented a challenging schedule for Robin and I, as we want to visit as many friends and family as possible and so many of our loved ones are in the Minneapolis/St. Paul metro area, and this time it was significantly more difficult to see the people we hoped to see while making sure we didn't push Lydia too hard. (We definitely failed at the not-pushing-Lydia-too-hard thing a couple of times, resulting in a Lydia Meltdown.) My heartfelt apologies to those we didn't get to see. :(

On the Lydia front, we have a bit of news. 1.) We are fairly sure Lydia has begun teething. She is drooling like mad and constantly chewing on her fingers (or anything else she can get in her mouth.) Not sucking. CHEWING. We made a Target run to invest in a teether we can put in the refrigerator and some teething tablets. 2.) Lydia is officially the loudest baby I have met. To say she has discovered her voice would be an understatement. Because Lydia is our first, we assumed all babies scream the way she does, but we learned that screaming is one of her skills. We have yet to hear a baby scream at the volume she does. She has also learned how to shriek. Do not confuse this with crying or whining. Shrieking is generally an excited or expressive sound, but my lord is it loud. In the same vein, we are fairly sure our days of eating out with a peaceful, sleeping baby are over. We will have to transition to eating out with an alert, excited baby and learn how to entertain her!

Wish us luck tomorrow as we pack up and venture back south!

On the Road: Installment Five

Robin's heaven: Blue Moon in Madison, eating the Blue Moon Burger


-- Post From My iPhone

On the Road: Installment Four

Cafe Manna in Milwaukee with Gramma Mree and Aunt Treesuh





-- Post From My iPhone

On the Road: Installment Three

We arrived safely at my parents' house late Monday night; Mission Accomplished! Our plans had been to drive as far as we could based on Lydia's temperment and our energy level, and it turns out "as far as we could" was all the way. We rolled into Forest Lake at 3 AM to find two very excited grandparents, and we were very glad we didn't have to do the hotel thing and then drive more the next day. (We did have an interesting encounter with a police officer at 2:30 AM when we missed the speed limit change coming into St. Paul. Turns out that speeding through a city in Minnesota in the middle of the night with an infant makes you look a little suspicious. The Texas driver's license and plates did not help. We couldn't figure out why he was drilling us with such questions as "How long are you going to be here?" "Why are you traveling?" and "Where are you coming from?"--Robin said he felt like we were crossing the border rather than cruising through St. Paul--until we later came to the conclusion that he may have thought we'd stolen Lydia. She is pretty cute.)

Our trip so far has been wonderful. As I'm sure I make pretty obvious, I am a Minnesota girl at heart; Robin and I both feel the pull to the Midwest pretty strongly. The 70s and 80s days are a welcome change to the 100+ weather we had all last week, and introducing Lydia to family and friends that I have known since I was in junior high or high school has been so rewarding and fun! (When I saw the person I sat next to in band my senior year, and he asked with shock, "Is that yours?") We also had the chance to go out to dinner with some very good friends who had a baby in May; Lydia loved meeting Sam! (Yes, Laqua family... Lydia had a date with Sam. How coincidental? For the non-Laquas, my great-grandma Lydia is Lydia's namesake, and she was married to great-grandpa Sam!)

I also have to say that Lydia traveled extremely well. Only towards the end did she get fussy, and after spending 19 hours in a carseat, I would have been fussy, too. We managed to make the trip in about the same time frame we would sans baby, fueled by our willpower and the handy battery-powered Medela Swing pump. I had prepared a few bottles for the road and sat in the backseat with Lydia almost the whole way. (Normally, Robin and I always sit in the front together, but we figured between feeding, pumping, and having to entertain Lydia, a backseat rider was necessary.) I would feed her, pump to make up for the ounces she ate, play with her a bit, and then she would snooze until the next feeding. We got home, and after being rocked by some very excited grandparents, she went to bed. I am also glad to say that by the next night, she was right back on her regular sleep schedule, something I was very worried about.

Only those with infants that share Lydia's dependence on swaddling will appreciate this: WE FORGOT THE SWADDLE-ME!!! For those not in the know, the Swaddle-Me blanket is an amazing contraption that velcroes around babies to keep them secure at night. Lydia tends to startle and wake herself up, so swaddling is really helpful, but she is so strong, that she busts out of any sort of wrap we try to do ourselves, hence the Swaddle-Me. We did manage to improvise with a large blanket and some reinforcement that I will not specify here, due to my guilt over "reinforcing" something keeping my baby's arms and legs restricted, but it did the trick until we made it to Babies 'r' Us yesterday for a new Swaddle-Me.

Photos will be coming; I just wanted to check in!

On the Road: Installment Two

Caffetto in Minneapolis


-- Post From My iPhone

On the Road: Installment One

Miles traveled: 548
Miles to go: 647
Bottles: 4
Dirty diapers: 3
Lydia meltdowns: 3 (All corresponding with dirty diapers.)






-- Post From My iPhone