Traveling with the non-traveler!

With my husband's operatic career, we have had the good fortune to spend the past few years traveling far and wide as a family.  Once baby #3 and more serious schooling for our oldest son started, we have shifted to more time at home than traveling.   When the chance to visit my husband with only our baby for one of his performances in Bar Harbor, Maine this summer came up, I was delighted and nervous! I had never been to Maine (we live in the Western United States, and where we were going in Maine is the furthest Eastern part of the USA.  We even when up a mountain where the sun first hits our country!)   Baby Kate does not adjust to new places as well as the traveling kids.  Since she has not traveled, I had no idea what to expect.   Thankfully, she was an angel on the longest leg of my airplane travel.   However, when we were settling in for the first night at our bed and breakfast, she was just getting ready to play.  We had to pile her into our rental car for a sleepy drive in the middle of the night. 

In Maine, you eat LOBSTER!!  Below is Kate enjoying her first claw.  

 

I am thankful I brought my Wriggle Wrapper for two reasons.  #1, the night of the opera, I realized I forgot to pack a non-diaper bag purse. (I have a little clutch I usually bring where I keep my collection of ticket stubs.)  The Wriggle Wrapper served to hold my keys, wallet, cell phone, lipsitck, etc.  And reason #2, our wonderful bed and breakfast did have a booster-type baby chair, but no way to keep a squirmy 11 month on in it.  Go Wriggle Wrapper!!

 

We spent as much time as we could in the Arcadia National Park, exploring the hiking and carriage trails. 

 

 

We also timed it so as to walk out the sandbar to Bar Island.  In low tide you can walk out and hike around there, but make sure to not get stuck once the tide comes. 

 
Poor tired baby, so much packed into just a few days!  It's not a phil&teds product, but we have used this great strap to carry Kate's infant car seat hands free.  She's getting heavy and this in no way replaces baby wearing, but it's been a lifesaver! 

So now baby Kate some some travel under her belt! It's never ideal to travel with kids, but it's possible!    

Wriggle Wrapper!

We have been finding fun ways to use our Wriggle Wrapper with our now 8 month old baby Kate!  She is of course, always supervised by a parent.  Kate loves being a big kid in our little car.  She is very entertained watching big brother and sister ride bikes, trikes, and scooters.  

 

And above, my Mom has this great rocking swan that Kate loves to ride.  She rocks it like a pro.  She also sits up in her Grandpa's old red high chair.

I may have mentioned this, but a couple Christmases ago I bought the Wriggle Wrapper as a joke gift for my husband since I wanted it.  It became less of a joke when I found out I was pregnant with Kate on Christmas Eve.  It has been great to have around, very versatile product at home or out and about.  

Out-numbered by our children

The transition to three kids has been wild! So wild in fact, that I started writing this post in early November and now it is late January. The early newborn period is always a little tricky for me but we are through the most difficult and have figured a few things out. It is nice have parenting experience so we don't need to panic about normal baby things, but funny to me how many things we are re-learning. It is like each kids is their own little person (which I say sarcastically, of course they are! With their own sets of great things and hard things).

Our baby Kate is just about the cutest baby ever, not that I am biased! I could just sit around and coo and nibble on her cute chubby body all day long. The tricky thing is, she has these two older siblings who need to go to school, have clean clothes and food. For all of Kate's extreme cuteness, she is a terrible at taking naps! I had hoped that by our third child we would know how to help them sleep but alas, no. Each of our kids have brought very different sleep challenges. She is a great sleeper if I can lay down with her or hold her all day but that can't always happen. She just loves us too much and always wants us close. Hopefully this will instill in her a great sense of security and love. However in the meantime, I just don't get much done.

Our sweet little 3 year old Jane has had more of an adjustment than we anticipated. Can't you just see the spark of naughtiness in her eyes? Overall she has done great, but we have some difficult moments every now and again with our willful Jane. We hope her willfulness will turn into great perseverance. There have been many times since she became a big sister where we have to collect her off the floor or leave somewhere with her screaming. My husband was shopping with her recently when she had a tantrum so spectacular that a stranger asked him if he needed help restraining her. Are not those the best parenting moments?

Our nearly 6 year old Colin has been an extremely sweet big brother to the new baby. (If only he could be so sweet to his 3 year old sister!) He is very attentive and soft. He loves to make the baby giggle and cuddle and help out. He has always loved little babies and adores his baby sister.

And when your Daddy is a musician, the wriggle wrapper is going to used for piano playing. Kind of funny, for Christmas of 2010, I gave Brian the wriggle wrapper as a joke because I wanted it. On Christmas Eve, we found out we were expecting (which was a few months sooner than we had hoped) so the wriggle wrapper became less of a joke. The positive pregnancy test did make the package of condoms I had bought for Brian redundant.

And so the real adventure begins parenting all these kids! I have great admiration for Moms of many children! (And I know lots have many, many more than I do!)

No more waiting

Since I had complained about the waiting game of the end of pregnancy I wanted to report that thankfully it did come to a nice ending with our lovely third daughter a few weeks ago. The past month has been a blur of not much sleep and lots of nursing and diapers, but we get to cuddle a very cute little baby!

Our phil&teds Explorer came in handy even while I was in labor. My water broke early in the morning on our son's first day of kindergarten. I thought labor might go really fast like it did with my second child. We headed to our birth center, but things stopped progressing. We decided to come home and made our kids a pancake breakfast. We then loaded our 3 year old in the stroller and walked a mile to get Colin to school. I think the walk helped get things moving again, and our new little girl joined us a few short hours later. I can now add to the reason I like phil&teds, they helped me not be pregnant anymore!

Here I am with my son at school, in labor and in all my huge pregnant glory! It feels so good to not be pregnant anymore! I have extreme respect for the moms of multiples as I can barely handle gestating just one baby!

Now we begin our real parenthood adventure as we are outnumbered by our children!

Fun cities to explore with kids-Mexico City

As we are home a bit more with a new baby and a more serious school schedule, I thought it would be fun to outline kid friendly things to do in some of our favorite cities. We do have 3 trips planned for the last few months of the year, can't stay still too long!

First stop in fun cities to explore with kids, Mexico City, Mexico!!

With kids in Mexico City head directly to el Bosque de Chapultepec!! We had an apartment in Zona Rosa, just a short walk from this truly amazing park. The size of Chapultepec makes New York's Central Park seem like a small community park; Wikipedia tells us it is Latin America's largest park. Get to the amazing free zoo as soon as you can!

The Chapultepec Zoo is a very impressive zoo with great animal habitats and some rare to see animals like pandas and condors. We also loved the monkeys! Our son was only about a year and a half at the time and in his vocab, all the animals were either doggies, kitties, or birds.

How sweet is that baby monkey!

The zoo also has a lovely butterfly and insect exhibit, which requires an extra ticket but is very reasonable and worth it. We loved being so close to all the beautiful butterflies and gross bugs.

Also located near Chapultepec is the Papalote Museo del nino, the Children's Museum of Mexico City. It is a massive wonderland of all things fun. We adore children's museums but wonder if it is a little confusing for our little ones. Suddenly they have a place where they can play with everything and then we go back to the real world where they cannot touch everything.

Our very pale blond little boy got lots of attention in Mexico!

One of our favorite places in the museum was the bubble room! Completely fun and amazing! My husband and I would have spent a lot of time playing in here even without our son.

If you have time while in Mexico City, make sure and head to the ruins of Teotihuacan! Just a short drive out of the city and completely incredible!

Here are Brian and Colin climbing the Pyramid of the Sun. So sad Colin will not remember this place, hope we can go back when he is older. My mom can empathize with Colin's young adventures. She was born in Chile and by the time she was 7 years old had traveled all over Latin America but sadly, does not remember much. She knows what it is like to be told all of the places she has been that she does not recall.

Me walking down the Calle de los muertos, the Street of the Dead, trying to not get a sunburn. The Pyramid of the Moon is at the end of the road. Teotihucan was a huge city, so many fun places to explore and climb.

While in Mexico, don't forget to catch some Mariachis! Can't go wrong at the Anthropology Museum also.

Viva Mexico!!

Waiting

I have not seen my feet while standing for about 4 months. Shoes with shoe laces are very hard to put on. I have been waddling around for a long time, and going from sitting to standing, or moving in general is getting harder and harder. I am getting more and more swollen, I would not recognize my lower extremities as my own. Contractions are coming more and more, but just for practice, nothing really making things happen. I have whole new colonies of visible veins down my legs that will be a fun souvenir to keep after the baby is born. I feel super clumsy, drop things all the time and then picking them up is very hard. I keep running into our 5 and 3 year olds with my belly. I get very nauseated again since my stomach is smashed by a baby, and my abdomen seems stretched to its limit. I am in a constant state of pulling up my trousers, of which I have only a handful that still fit. And the fatigue! And the inability to get much done. Just a few of the joys of late pregnancy.

But I still love to feel the baby kick and can't wait to meet her. Our older kids are so excited for a new baby- they both are great with little ones. I love hearing our 3 year old Jane list off the people she loves which always includes her baby sister. I am excited for labor, not only to not be pregnant anymore but I actually have always had a fascination with the process of giving birth. I trained and worked as a labor doula (to provide non-medical labor support) years before I had my own kids. Knowing how labor works and helping other women through labor before having a baby is very great preparation. I have had two very easy births and hope for an easy third. Maybe we will be surprised as birth is unpredictable but we hope for a peaceful beginning for our little one. And knowing all I know, I would happily go through pregnancy again. I am grateful for our growing family as I have seen too many friends who long for children struggle with fertility issues.

And now to keep waiting. . .

I had my final trip of this pregnancy last weekend, a family reunion in Central Utah. This pregnancy has taken me as far as Italy and Poland, but I need to stay a little closer to home for now. I was 37 weeks along (which is when I delivered my first son). While on our trip, we got to go on some mule drawn wagon rides to celebrate our Western United States heritage. I maybe should have taken a few more rough rides to get labor going.

Traveling without kids? (!)

After 5 years on the road with 2 kids, my husband Brian and I had a little European get-away together for an entire week without our kids. (For those new to the phil&teds blog, we are a traveling opera family and have written some travel related posts over the last year. We could not make it without out phil&teds gear!) I was seven+ months pregnant and physically was not up to traveling (and jet lag) with 2 kids. We made arrangements for the kids to stay home and missed them terribly. But, we had an amazing week in one of our favorite cities- Warsaw, Poland. Brian had a return engagement with the Polish National Opera. We spent two months in Warsaw in 2009 and were surprised and delighted by this amazing city. We are continually impressed by all that the Polish people have accomplished with such a tragic history. Their strong spirit is evident in how they rebuilt under Communism after the Nazis destroyed 85% of the city. World War II is much more real to us now and we are so grateful for all the sacrifices of past generations. Warsaw is a very great place to travel with kids, but oh so easy without them too!

Since I was very used to walking around Poland with a phil&teds, I could not help but grab a Vibe and someone else's child! I love the air-filled tires for the cobblestones of Europe!

As easy as phil&teds has made our travel with children, my husband and I were amazed at how simple travel was with just a baby in-utero. We could decide to go somewhere and leave our apartment in mere minutes! No diaper bags to restock, no sippy cups to fill, no recalcitrant toddlers avoiding having their shoes put on. Since we had spent time in the city before, I continually would go to walk the long, stroller friendly routes I was used to but Brian would point out we could just take the stairs. We made it to a few museums that we did not brave with kids, sat at outdoor cafes and generally enjoyed the great Polish food culture and outdoor Warsaw! On our last night there was took a beautiful long walk starting in Old Town and down the pedestrian streets. We do enjoy Europe, our home country of America is just a little baby.

(To see more of beautiful Warsaw, our family blog has lots of photos from this June, http://stuckihouse.blogspot.com/)

Now we just wait the last few weeks until our new adventure begins, parenting three children! Wish us luck!