You Say "Bag", I Say "Bag"

The past week of 90 degree highs confirms that summer has a firm grip on Florida and will not be letting go for a few very long months.

Summertime means park time and park time means I am once again reminded that I am not from around here.

Silas and I were playing near the slides when another group of kids showed up. Silas's go-to friendship gesture is to grab a big handful of wood chips and bring them to the new people.

One of the older boys, perhaps about ten, looked at me and asked, "What is he doing?"

"He's trying to share some wood chips with you," I responded as I brushed the chips out of Silas's hand, telling him that not everyone wants to hold onto wood chips.

"What are woodchips?" the boy asked next, and I blinked, so he clarified. "You mean the mulch?"

"Yeah," I said, nodding. "Wood chips are another name for mulch."

What I didn't say is that where I came from, the term "mulch" was much more closely related to fertilizer as a term. And to be clear, when I say fertilizer, I'm thinking of manure. Feces. You know? Yuck. I thought about how I had never heard "mulch" used in conjunction with a playground growing up. And then I remembered something that had happened several months ago.

A friend had taken Silas to the park while I was taking an exam. Later, when I picked him up, she apologized. "He only wanted to sit down in the mulch and play! Luckily, they had just put down clean mulch, if that helps."

I had been slightly confused, wondering what the definition of clean manure meant. I trusted her judgement and figured Silas had not been harmed. I joked about how he'd have to build his immune system some day. Then I went on with my life completely unaware that I had experienced a communication error until just now.

Adventures in South Florida

Silas and I went on a mini-vacation down to south Florida to visit some friends. The five hour car trip is now officially the longest distance I have driven with Silas by myself. It wasn't even that bad. On the way down, he was on the cusp of a nap for about two hours, and kept crying out "nurse please!" but when I did stop, he was too excited by the trip to actually nurse. Oh well.

He doesn't sleep very well when we're traveling, so our days became sort of weird. Normally we're up by seven-thirty on a good day. He decided to bring that back about an hour and a half. And once he was awake, he woke up our friend's kid too. So we would have breakfast, let the kids play for a bit, head to the park, let them run around for awhile, get back home and it would still only be ten in the morning!

The first day down, we headed into Ft. Myers proper to see the Edison Festival of Lights. The parade was billed as an amazing nighttime parade and there were people lining the streets so thickly that the kids wouldn't have been able to see anything. Apparently people go down and tape off sections of the sidewalk up to a week in advance to get a spot.

But here's the thing. The parade kind of sucked.

I don't know how they do paraded by you, but where I'm from, a parade starts within five minutes or so of the start time and proceeds in an orderly fashion - you have your fire trucks and police cars and high school bands and cute floats, interspersed with Shriners on tiny motorcycles and the occasional baton twirling brigade.

This parade was supposed to start at seven. At seven, one single police car raced through the street. Silence. Ten minutes later, there were a few marching color guards. Ten minutes later, there were more fire trucks and police cars than I've ever seen in a parade before. Maybe I'm a buzzkill, but to me, three or four of each is sufficient to wow the children and start a parade. They had a small fleet of ten to fifteen of each.

Then another ten minute wait. Then another color guard and some cheesy floats and some politicians in cars. Since it was dark out, it was hard to see who was who and why they were there.

The highlight of the parade was seeing the Clydesdale horses. They were amazingly huge and followed by some ponies that looked like Sophie and Sherlock in comparison.

After that, we ended up leaving. The fireworks were nice though and walking around downtown had been pleasant.

The next day was a jet-setting kind of day. After hitting the parks in the morning, we made cookies and headed to the neighborhood luau (where we later learned up to 100 people had attended). Between me and my friend and our two kids, we probably brought the mean age down to, oh, fifty. But don't get me wrong - everyone was nice to us. We sat by an inflatable palm tree and Silas refused to wear his lei and we cheered on some people playing cornhole.

From there, we realized it was already four in the afternoon and it was a mad dash to the Greek festival to see the dancing and get some baklava. The kids were less impressed by this, so we didn't stay long, but it was still fun.

The best day was Monday. We went to the aquarium and the beach. There was a slight hitch to our plans - none of us realized it was President's day, so the aquarium and the beach were significantly more crowded.

At the aquarium, Silas enjoyed looking at all of the different sea creatures. His favorites were the manatees and the clown fish. For some reason, when he saw the clown fish, he had to point to each one and say "fish!" even though we had passed by many other fish already. There was also an area with giant plastic models of some coral and fish (they were ten times bigger than life-sized) and Silas stared up in awe at the towering coral.

We packed up and headed towards the beach near noon. Oh, the beach. Our first indication that we were screwed came about the time we pulled into the parking lot and realized that every spot was full and every row was full of lines of cars waiting for a spot to open up. We were optimistic at first, but by the third time a parking spot opened up JUST behind us while we waited behind someone waiting for a person to back out, we gave up. We went to Publix for lunch. This Publix didn't have any seating or benches, so we had an impromptu picnic on the sidewalk. The kids seemed to enjoy it and it beat trying to feed two young kids in their carseats.

Being gluttons for punishment, we headed back to the beach after lunch. I like to call it eternal optimism. And guess what? There were parking spots! Whew. Plus, we had only missed out on the extra strong middle of the day UV rays, so our skin was safer anyhow. (Always a bright side). Even better? Running on the beach for a couple hours wore out the kids so much that they slept on the way home, and after dinner, Silas slept from 8:30 to 5. That was the first time he's ever slept so well away from home. I would have rejoiced, but I stayed up until 11 to watch ice dancing (mostly worth it!) and waking up at 5 was still a bit rough on me.

The drive home was much better than the drive down. Silas napped for most of the trip to be honest. I think he was still worn out from the beach. Traffic was light most of the way and the weather was good, though I admit I prefer a bit of an overcast sky during a long drive.

I hope to go down and visit again in March and coming up shortly after that, we'll be heading down south again when Smiley runs in the Tough Mudder with some friends. I can only hope Silas will continue his positive trend of kind of sleeping better while we're away!

Tired Mom, Happy Baby

You remember Christmas as a kid? I mean Christmas Eve, the night before. Going to sleep seemed impossible because tomorrow was going to be so awesome.

Or maybe you didn't celebrate Christmas, but you might still know the feeling - perhaps the day before your family went on a really fun vacation. You might have been up every other hour at night in excitement.

Ok, so maybe you didn't celebrate Christmas and your family never went anywhere. I'm sorry. That sucks. But you still might know the feeling. That feeling of anxious excitement keeping you awake the day before you start a new job or go to a new school.

I'm pretty sure that for Silas, every night must be Christmas Eve. There is no other explanation for how he can almost settle down to sleep, quietly babbling baby bedtime talk before turning over and sitting up and starting to shout about "football" or "doggies."

And once he reminds himself that there could be doggies outside, he can't understand why in the world I would want him to stay in his bed and not go look outside for doggies. After all, if he's thinking about doggies, clearly doggies are around here somewhere.

Imagine that for five nights in a row and you've imagined how my trip up north went with him. Silas could not and would not shut down at night. Somehow, he got by on less sleep than ever and I could only hang on for the ride.

I'll write more about my trip later, but I wanted to finish with the "happy ending" of this story. On our last day of the trip, we had two flights to get home. The first flight was roughly around the time of his afternoon nap. Silas fell asleep in the car about fifteen minutes before we got to the airport and no amount of clapping or singing could have stopped him. This led to him really not feeling like a nap on the two and a half hour flight.

At the very end of the flight, as we began our descent, Silas fell asleep for about another fifteen minutes.

After a two hour layover, we got onto our final plane. I was certain that Silas would fall asleep and remain asleep for the short one hour flight. We boarded the fairly empty and tiny plane and got a row of two seats to ourselves. As the plane taxied down the runway for take off, the cabin lights were dimmed and I thought to myself - perfect!

Then pretty much everyone else on the flight turned on their reading lights. On the tiny plane, this brought the light level up enough that Silas had to look around. He waved to the person sitting a row ahead of us across the aisle. He looked out the window and said "bye-bye doggies" about fifty million times. We read the Airplane Safety Card sixty times or so. Every time I would fold it back up, he would unfold it and point to a picture, looking at me to explain what it meant.

But I was not going to be discouraged. I scooted over to the empty window seat, hoping the space would be a little darker and tried to nurse him to sleep. It was almost working, until the cabin lights came up when the complimentary beverage service began.

I knew when I was beat. I read the Airplane Safety Card with Silas a few more times and we looked out the window together, wondering if, perhaps, there were some doggies outside.

Then we hit some turbulence. It wasn't bad, but my stomach dropped a few times and I'll admit I was somewhat more nervous than usual due to the small size of the aircraft. I did my best to breath slowly and calmly and to force my heart rate to stay normal so that Silas would not sense my nervousness.

He quieted down, looking out the window without trying to pull down the shade or asking about doggies. Was he scared too?

He had never sat so still in my lap, and I was certain he was deciding that this flying business was no fun after all. I couldn't quite see his face since he was looking away from me out the window and was hugging my arm gently. Each new bout of turbulent movement caused him to cling just a touch harder, and I gave him a kiss on the top of his head.

That's when I noticed he was asleep. The hugging must have been an involuntary movement, because he was sound asleep. So sound asleep that even landing did not wake him up, nor the movement of passengers retrieving their bags from the overhead compartment. But we couldn't stay on the plane forever, so I gently woke him and we went on our way.

That night, Silas didn't get to sleep in his crib until ten, and I was ready to cry when I heard him crying in his room at about five in the morning. I sent Smiley to go grab him, and Silas surprised us both by snuggling between us and going back to sleep until eight thirty. He must have been making up for some of that lost sleep. I was very thankful. And I even feel coherent. I hope this blog post reflects that. I'm too scared to check myself.

Tis The Season...

...to find out if I can successfully bring home a Christmas tree in the car with Silas.

The answer is, yes.

I no longer have my dear Sebring, but I guess it's for the best, as this would have been an impossible task. In our new car, I can put down two of the seats and move Silas's carseat to behind the driver's seat. That way, the tree fit in on an angle through the trunk and I got to see Silas point and smile at the visible tree top on the drive home.

Actually picking out the tree was fun too. I had to steel myself to walk right past the more expensive, taller trees and we headed to the 5-6 foot section. I'm not a huge fan of the tree shopping here in Florida, because my northern upbringing insists that I shouldn't be able to wear sandals while picking out a Christmas tree, but it was almost eighty degrees out, so here we are!

Silas liked looking at all the different trees, and I pulled out a few from the piles to show him, spinning them around while he clapped and smiled and pointed at the bald spots. The one I ended up getting was, of course, the one that he seemed to smile the most at. Now, I had Silas in a shopping cart seat, because while he can walk, he does not quite understand how to stay near me yet. I debated grabbing an employee to come get the tree for me, since I didn't think I could carry the tree and push the cart at the same time.

But, I decided I should at least give it a try first. So I lifted up the tree and put it in the cart (remember, I was at the 5-6 ft section, so it's not like this was a mega tree or anything). I pushed the cart in a short test run and nothing fell over, so I brought the tree to the front of the store, getting only a few odd looks.

My favorite part was when an older lady came into look for a small tree and Silas started waving "Hello!" to her. Waving hello is Silas's newest skill, and she smiled and waved back at him and stopped to chat for a bit, telling me about her granddaughter who was also starting to wave hello. I really love being able to share these sort of conversations with strangers. It's a lot of fun, and I like seeing the pride that parents and grandparents take in their children come through in conversation.

The store employee at the front only seemed mildly hesitant when I said I wanted to put the tree in the back of my car. I'm sure they've put many trees in smaller cars though, and indeed, it was no problem to fit the small fir tree into the trunk of the car.

I think that the hardest part of the day was trying to stand the tree up and secure it in the base all by myself once we got home, while Silas did his best to "help." The tree only fell over once during this process (obviously I kept it from going towards Silas; thank goodness for small, "easy-to-handle" trees) and when it was set up straight, decorating with Silas was fun.

First, he tried to suck on the Christmas lights, because I have the slightly larger teardrop style lights. After I put an end to that, he started trying to unwind the lights once I put them on the tree. I gave him the plastic ball ornaments to unpack, and he set to this task vigorously. I had gotten the non-breakable ornaments three years back, before I even had a Silas to think about, and I'm glad I did. They might not shine as nicely as glass ornaments, but I do appreciate the peace of mind that if Silas grabs a hold of one roughly, he won't end up with shards of glass everywhere.

All in all, the bottom of the tree is already a mess from Silas checking everything out. He had to pull the lights and garland and the bottom branches. But he seems to have accepted that this tree is now just part of our household decoration and he's MOSTLY leaving it be. Now that I've written that, I can only imagine what he will do when he wakes up tomorrow.

Cosplay Fun

Over the past weekend, I visited my friend who is temporarily in Florida. The three hour car trip was the longest car trip I've taken to date with Silas and he did pretty good. The purpose of the trip? To hang out and to go to another one day convention! I'm going to say in advance, these past two mini-cons have given me a longing to go to a bigger convention one of these days.

So the evening I got down there, we set to work on finishing my cosplay costume. Later I intend to post pictures of the costume as a sort of "how-to" guide. I redid a Millia Rage (from the video game Guilty Gear XX) cosplay but with the goal of being able to feed Silas in costume if needed. A quick search of the internet informed me that I might be the only person in the world who ever had to deal with this situation.

Anyhow, I had only been able to do some preliminary work on the costume during the week. Watching a baby is a full time job as anyone who has ever done so can attest; I can't just set him down and go pin fabric. And I definitely can't pin fabric in the middle of his play space - babies are immensely attracted to things that they can swallow and/or stab themselves with. So I had cut out the fabric for the dress part of the costume, sewed that together, and cut out and partially sewed the sleeves.

We worked on the details, taking turns entertaining Silas and keeping him away from the sewing frenzy. Ultimately, though, a lot of the costume details were held together with duct tape and safety pins. (Breastfeeding or not, I think every cosplayer has gone through this phase). But, the costume turned out great:

Not pictured: the baby spit up that adorned the costume minutes later.

So yeah. If you're comparing this to a picture of the character, you'll see a few things are missing. I have belt buckles to add to the top and bottom of the dress. I need to pick up some long black gloves and, ideally, grow my hair out about six more feet. Some of these are long term goals.

Being pregnant in Florida in the summer pretty much sucks

The other day, our power was knocked out when yet another neighbor's tree fell on the lines across the street and even though it was the evening and our house was staying roughly around 80 degrees, I was so blasted uncomfortable. Frustrating!

So instead of being hyper aware of food cravings, I've actually had a location craving since then. I desperately wish that I could be up in Michigan, vacationing on Lake Superior. You might know how when you have a craving for a certain kind of food, nothing else seems like it will make do? That's what this feels like. I find myself fantasizing about getting into the car and starting to drive and then magically being there.

I remember the summer Smiley and I got married, we went up to Michigan with my family for our "honeymoon." The weather was a little chilly a couple of the days and of course Lake Superior was extra cold, but I recall it being nice.

Mostly, I recall people complaining about the humidity. At the time, I'd been living in Florida for just over half a year. I was honestly surprised by how much of a difference it made for me. I felt like I could actually breathe the air outside in Michigan. That I could walk outside and not instantly hate life.

...

Sorry, I just had to go glance at a few pictures of the snowbanks that pile up during the winter. I was about to lose my mind or something.

But the idea of going vacation up in Michigan for a few weeks right now? That sounds absolutely wonderful.

Sometimes we discover things

The other week, our power went out.

I had chatted with my sister in law about her bridesmaids dresses for awhile and had gone over to my computer to read the internet for a bit before Smiley got home from work. There was no warning about this power outage - no brief flickers, no flashes, nothing. Just one moment I was reading a somewhat interesting article about how dogs in a household can help babies develop a better immune system and then -

Silence.

You know how you don't realize just how many things make noises in houses these days until they all stop at once? That silence was always eerie to me growing up and it still is today. Our computer room was completely silent, and dark. The normal, constant hum of running fans was gone and I swear I couldn't tell if my first thought was in my mind or if I had spoken it out loud because it seemed so loud and intrusive.

I wasn't thinking anything exciting. I was thinking - and hoping - that somehow a breaker had simply tripped and all I had to do was go into the garage and turn it back on. I kind of knew it wasn't that though, and as I grabbed our flashlight, I started wondering what else could have knocked off our power.

After all, it wasn't raining and hadn't rained during the afternoon. There were some storms predicted for later in the evening but they hadn't hit yet. Despite the abundance of electronics in our house, we weren't using more than usual. I couldn't think of anything else.

It was no surprise to see that the breaker box in the garage was fine. I texted my husband to let him know the power was out and decided to check outside.

Awhile back, Smiley and I had returned from a trip to IL only to find a tree branch had come down by our house, ripping the power lines down with it. More recently, we had gotten rid of six trees that were most likely to hit our house, but in the back of my mind, I knew the lines were down again.

And they were.

Now, thankfully, they weren't down at our house. You know how occasionally you can go outside and see something and wonder - was that always there? I wondered, were those power lines always dangling in the street?

I walked to the edge of our driveway and saw a pine branch down and partially into the road a few houses down the way. In the other direction, I saw the power lines ripped from the pole and dangling there in the street. It looked like we were one of the lucky six or so houses affected.

There was certainly a relief to see the power lines down; sure our power was out, but it was out because of a physical reason that the power company could fix basically in front of our house. It meant that there was no hazy response about the power being down in an area for a bit for unknown reasons.

I called the incident in to the power company just as Smiley was getting home from work.

"They said they'd probably send someone down here in about 15 minutes or so," I told him.

We watched the road for a few moments, watching as cars went by and tentatively slowed down to swerve around the wires. We heard our neighbor turn on his generator next door.

Smiley shrugged, going inside to change into a t-shirt and shorts. "I guess I might as well mow the lawn then."

I changed out my sandals for socks and gym shoes and joined him in the backyard, helping out by removing large sticks from the yard and putting them in our burn pit.

The mosquitoes in the backyard were ridiculous. I found myself wishing I had a horse tail so that I could be constantly swishing it to rid my back of all the pesky bugs. Every time I stood still for more than five seconds, I could feel a mosquito land. So, I might not have been the most helpful of stick gatherers - instead, I kept going around to the front of the house to see if the power company had arrived yet.

Eventually, Smiley finished mowing the yard and came into the garage.

"Did you see the skeleton in our yard?" he asked me.

I pictured a toy skeleton set, trashed, blown on to our property. I hadn't seen any sort of skeleton. I told Smiley as much.

"Yeah, in the back corner of the property. I think it's a cat."

Well, I guess I couldn't call this day anything but interesting. I followed him back into the yard, going to the far corner of our property. Nothing jumped out to me at first, but then he pointed to a small area and as I got closer, I saw what was unmistakeably bones.

Small bones, a small skeleton - but definitely not a toy.

"See it looks like it has a tail or something," Smiley was saying as I looked for a stick to poke the skeleton with because everyone knows that's how you handle skeletons in your backyard.

"No, it doesn't look right," I said, as I used a large stick that I had obviously missed in my stick gathering duties to push aside some of the pine straw and dirt that partially covered the skeleton. "It looks like -"

Now, I'm not an expert in any sort of bone identification. I've never sat down and thought to myself, gosh, wouldn't it be fun to look at skeletons of small animals so that later in life I can identify them! No, I was not even semi-pro in skeleton identification.

Luckily, this skeleton had a beak.

"I think it's a chicken," I said finally.

The bones were picked clean and I didn't know if that meant I should be more worried that something was out there that might try to eat our little, chicken sized dogs or that the bones had been there for long enough to be only bones and somehow I had missed them for weeks.

"I wonder if it was one of those roosters," Smiley said.

We listened in silence and did nothing further with the bones.

I'm honestly still pretty sure they're just hanging out in our yard, perhaps with the spirit of an angry chicken or rooster attached.

I just have no clue what one does when one finds a very, very dead chicken in their backyard. They never covered this in our closing, despite all the paperwork we went through. And I'm positive our insurance policy doesn't lean one way or another on the matter. It seems cruel to bag the bones and ask our neighbors if they are missing a chicken.

It seems gross to pick them up.

Well, we went to our garage and Smiley patched some holes in our driveway while I watched the repairmen from the city come and fix the power lines. Eventually the mosquitoes became more than overwhelming and we went inside and sat in the dark, chatting about this and that and waiting for the telltale hum of electronics to start up again.

We were only without power for about two and a half hours that night, thankfully, and it wasn't terribly hot out that evening. Also, who knows when we would have found out about that darned dead chicken if it hadn't been for that darned dead pine branch falling on a power line. Funny how life is so connected like that. Or something.

It doesn't feel right!

People, listen to me. It is December 23rd and I have my windows open!

Open, I tell you.

I'm wearing a t-shirt and skirt and am not wrapped up in a blanket. I am slightly confused and slightly afraid.

Despite my guildmates in WoW who insist on calling me Canadian, I am not Canadian (and I don't eat mooseburgers). But I am from one of the farthest northern points in the continental US. I've spent over two decades living in areas where Christmas is synonymous with snow.

Now that I'm living in Florida, I find myself terrified to realize that I might spend the next two decades living in areas where it doesn't snow in the winter and where, in fact, SUMMER is the worst season due to unbearable heat and copious amounts of rain (and the stray hurricane). 

This is my second full winter here and I still haven't quite learned how to shift my life properly, like doing yard work into the fall and winter, when it's not 90 degrees outside and 100% humidity. You know how health professionals talk about seasonal affective disorder? (aka SAD. Isn't that cute?)

I fear I have that, but in reverse. The shortening days, the diminished sunlight - sure it's depressing, but not as depressing as knowing that these are the best days for having the windows open and for deciding to eat outside at a restaurant or in the privacy of our gazebo and I just don't know how to get my body wired for that.

For example, I still took out my heavy comforter and flannel sheets for the bed when December rolled around. And I still sleep under them. And then turn the fan on so I don't overheat.

For example, I wrap myself up in a blanket and scarf to let the dogs out each morning, and then realize it's actually gorgeous outside and now I look like a hobo.

For example, temperatures under 70 degrees send me running to wear my winter coat.

Wait. That last one there just means that I'm behaving like a Floridian after all!