New Word, Continued

The "I self!" (I can do it myself) phase took a new turn today when I tried to clean a messy diaper to shouts of "I self! I self!" and to Jack's little hands trying to grab the diaper wipe out of my hand so he could do it himself.

Ah, motherhood.

New Word

Jack has a new word: "self".

As in "I can do it myself."

Enough said.

It Finally Happened

Yesterday morning, when I went in Jack's room to get him after he'd woken up, I found him on the floor. He looked at me and said "foot, hurt." He had climbed out of his crib!

Luckily, he wasn't hurt at all. I lowered the crib one more level last night (ours has four levels, rather than the standard three) but think we're not far off from the conversion to a toddler bed (just involves removing one side of the crib and adding the half-rail that came with it).

I remember when we ordered the crib two years ago that I couldn't even wrap my mind around a toddler bed as it seemed SO far in the future.

Time really does fly with these little ones...

Paul

It was a proud moment for me this morning in our Music Together class. (This is our third round of classes - we took the first in Arlington and the second two here. Jack absolutely loves them.)

When Jack and I walked into class, Jack immediately exclaimed "Paul!" This is because the instructor had a CD on while waiting for class to begin and the song that was playing was "She Loves You" from the Beatles. I'll stop short of saying Jack is obsessed with The Beatles but it is fair to say that he requests "Paul" a LOT. The teacher was so tickled that Jack had correctly identified the music and proceeded to tell us that Paul was her favorite Beatle too.

About 40 minutes later, during the part of class where the kids play instruments to one of the songs from the semester's musical catalog, the teacher instead opted for another song which she said she was playing in honor of Jack's musical taste. She played The Beatles' "Hello, Goodbye" and Jack played along with bongos while I chose a tambourine and sang along to all the words. It was good fun.

In unrelated news, here's a cute picture Mick took of Jack yesterday on the slide at the playground.

48 Hours

48 hours is the total amount of time we were delayed during our flights to & from England over the past week. It was, hands down, the most unbelievable travel experience we have ever had.

I blogged before we left about our 24 hour delay getting to Manchester due to mechanical problems. Luckily, once we finally left on Sunday evening, things went smoothly. Jack was great on both our flight to NY and the flight to Manchester, and he even slept a bit over 5 hours on the plane, meaning he easily adjusted to the time change (which is hard to do when flying overnight).
On our return journey, our flight from Manchester to NY was delayed 3 hours apparently due to high winds in NY. Our connecting flight to Detroit was changed by the airline to accommodate our later arrival. Smartly, Mick suggested I pack pajamas and extra diapers for Jack, just in case. We finally set off from Manchester around 2:30 pm (original flight time of 11 am). The flight took longer than normal because we had to skirt the volcanic ash (which had closed airports in Scotland, Ireland, Spain, and Italy on Sunday) and we finally landed in NY at 5:45 pm Eastern time. At that point, we'd all been up for 14 hours (since we'd woken at 3:30 am Eastern time).

Our connecting flight was at 6:25 pm and we knew we'd have to hustle to make it. We had to clear customs & immigration, recheck our luggage, and go back through security. Luckily, we noticed that our flight was delayed to 6:50 so it gave us a bit of breathing room. (Side note: going through security after international travel was MUCH easier at JFK airport than it was at O'Hare... there was a security checkpoint immediately after we cleared customs that was dedicated just to those of us making connecting flights from international travel. What a relief!)

We ran about a mile (no exaggeration) to our gate, got our seat assignments, waited about 10 minutes, and then the flight started boarding. We were SO relieved to be almost home.

Silly us.

After first class boarded, we realized that no one else was boarding. Then, we saw the luggage being removed from the plane. Not a good sign. We were told that due to mechanical problems (again) we'd be delayed until 9:30 pm. Ugh. After waiting about another hour, we were told the flight was canceled. We were stuck in NY. Again - being "stuck" in New York would have been something I would have welcomed a few years ago. But with toddler in tow, we just wanted to get home.

Mick was told the earliest direct flight to Detroit was at 6:30 pm the next day. So instead he opted for an 8:30 am flight to Atlanta with a connection to Detroit. We stayed in a hotel Sunday night and were up at 5:00 Monday morning with Jack, thanks to jet lag. (Of course, it took us about an hour and half to make it from the airport to the hotel as we needed to board the air train (Jack is obsessed with trains so this was fun for him) and then wait about a half hour outside - where it was cold and very windy - for a shuttle to the hotel. I almost cried from sheer exhaustion but was able to hold it together.)
So that was Sunday. A very memorable Mother's Day for me, to be sure.

On Monday morning, we tried again to get home. Once we boarded our flight to Atlanta, we thought we were home free. We were in the first row of first class and were enjoying our leg room and the service while waiting to leave the gate. Jack was playing nicely on the floor in front of us. All of a sudden, he started getting upset. I picked him up and noticed he was SOAKING wet. His jeans were basically dripping with water. And the water was freezing cold. I looked at the floor and noticed that the carpet at our feet was waterlogged. When Mick and I tapped our feet on the floor, water squelched out everywhere. So, we had to call the flight attendant who, in turn, had to notify mechanics. Mick and I were just waiting to hear we had to deplane or something but luckily they fixed the problem and we made it to Atlanta with no more problems.

We caught our connecting (packed) flight to Detroit and landed at 2 pm Monday. We were so happy to be home... but we still had to contend with luggage that did not arrive until 4 pm. By the time we got the car from the lot, drove to Ann Arbor, and did a quick grocery run for milk and some other staples, we didn't get home until almost 6:00, a full 24 hours after we were scheduled to return.

So the grand total of flight delays going to and coming back from England was 48 hours. The total door-to-door travel time between leaving Mick's mum's house on Sunday and walking through our front door on Monday evening was 36 hours.

Through it all, Jack was fantastic. Given that he and I had such a rough, tantrum-riddled week the days leading up to our travel, I was expecting the worst. But this kid was a champ. Anyone -- adult or child -- would have been justified in having at least one meltdown during the return travel. But Jack was just charming and cooperative and good spirited. Mick and I really lucked out; Jack's good behavior helped to calm us and we didn't end up in one argument (though we were frustrated beyond belief with the situation).

We were so grateful to be able to visit with family over the last week and Jack had a lot of fun adventures (children's museum, steam train riding, swimming pool, park, etc.) so I'll post those pictures later.

Seriously?

I don't Twitter (or "tweet") and I don't do Facebook (yet). However, if I did, I think this statement might actually qualify as a valid tweet:

I just finished slicing grapes for Jack and removing SEEDS from every single one of them. And then he wanted more. Grapes with seeds: Nightmare.

Children's Medication Recalled

For any of you who may have Infants or Children's Motrin/Tylenol/ Benadryl/Zyrtec in your medicine cabinet, you might want to check your medication to see if it's included in a product recall: http://www.mcneilproductrecall.com/page.jhtml?id=/include/new_recall.inc

I just bought some store-brand medications for Jack so I'm safe on those... but I do have a bottle of recalled Benadryl and of recalled Tylenol. It's unclear from this site whether you can get a refund, but I'm going to contact the company to find out.

Thwarted

We set out today for our trip across the pond to visit family. Mick and I decided we should leave home at 1:00 in order to give us time to drive to the airport, park in the off-site economy lot, and get checked in with time for Jack to run around before boarding. I knew our travel was going to go well when we pulled out of the driveway at exactly 1:00.

The morning had been pleasant, with me tuning in to the Big 10 Network to watch President Obama deliver the commencement address at U of M. (I used to think that having Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the UN, as my commencement speaker was cool... now I'm jealous of today's graduates.) On our way on the shuttle bus from the economy parking to the airport terminal, we were bypassed by the President's motorcade as Air Force One was awaiting his return. While it was old-hat to see the motorcade in DC, we were completely enamored by seeing it today in Michigan!

We were in the airport and through security by 2:15 - plenty of time to grab some lunch and board our first flight. Everything was going so well!

Alas, it was not to be...

Long story short, our flight to JFK (which is where we were going to connect to our flight taking us to Manchester) ended up having mechanical problems that were so severe that we had to be towed in from the tarmac. The plane was hot and we sat on board for a half hour before even leaving the gate (it was a full flight and took them forever to load luggage). Then, when we finally pulled away from the gate, we made it a few hundred yards before stopping again. I thought we were waiting for flight traffic to clear so we could get on the runway and takeoff but I was sadly wrong. The pilot announced that we had "steering issues" and he'd placed a call to Atlanta (we were on a Delta flight - Atlanta is the HQ) and was waiting to hear what to do. About 15 minutes later, the pilot announced that we needed to return to the gate so a mechanic could fix the problem. We moved... about 100 feet... and then stopped again. This time, the pilot notified us that he'd heard a strange popping noise and "didn't want to take any chances" so we needed to be towed back to the gate. We waited. And waited. And then the pilot announced that it was taking so long because we didn't just need a tow but we also needed an airport services escort to lead us in. UGH!

Although there was eventually another plane arranged to take everyone to JFK, we knew we'd miss our connection to Manchester and didn't want to be stuck in NYC overnight without luggage. It pains me to write that. Pre-Jack, I think Mick and I would have jumped at the chance for free day in New York. But with toddler in tow - and no way to get our luggage - we decided the best decision was to return home and just try the same itinerary tomorrow.

The struggle wasn't over though. We needed to wait in line for about 45 minutes to request that our luggage NOT be moved from one plane to another but that it be off-loaded so we could take it home tonight. Then, I insisted that Mick (who was his usual calm and level-headed self throughout this fiasco) go to another desk to find out if we'd get some sort of compensation for our messed up schedule. (We received $50 each toward a future flight. Not spectacular, but it is what it is.)

While Mick was managing all of this, Jack ran through the airport - and I chased him. (He's lightning fast, no kidding.) He came upon a Mrs Field's cookie shop and spotted, not the cookies, brownies, and muffins, but the fruit. He asked me repeatedly for an apple. So of course I got one for him. It was a proud moment for me.
Once we finally had the luggage, it was back on the shuttle bus to the economy lot and then back on expressway for the 30 minute drive home. Grand total was 7 hours spent traveling today to officially make it nowhere.

We'll try again tomorrow though and hopefully Jack will be as well-behaved as he was this afternoon. I had multiple struggles with him this week (one of which resulted in tears -- mine!) which I think were due to his age and the whole gaining independence stage. It was a very difficult week, to say the least. I was kind of dreading the flights today. But thankfully Jack put all my fears to rest as he was really such a gem... I hope he can manage this for two days in a row.