Riding Solo With The Girl!

Hello, friends!

For the past 5 days, our family has been on a bit of an adventure. Megan's cousin was getting married in California (Congrats, Alex!) so she was going out to the wedding. Given the ages of the kids, we figured that it'd be good for Ezra to go too since he'll actually have memories of what happened. There was no way we were going to have Meg go with both kids by herself, so that left us with two options:

1) All 4 of us go
2) Megan and Ezra go while Thaliea and I stay behind

Given that we were talking about an extra plane ticket (Thaliea would fly free), we would be back to California in about a month, and the wedding was on a boat (I get motion sickness), the choice was obvious: divide and conquer, with me riding solo with the girl.

I now, humbly present to you, a rundown of the past 5 days:

Saturday:
- We drop Megan, Ezra, my in-laws, and Megan's sister's family off at the airport. Thaliea immediately knows that something is wrong because she isn't getting out of the car. Crying commences.
- Thankfully, we kept her up past her normal bedtime so when we get home, she's able to nap.
- In the afternoon, we go to her favorite playground to keep her occupied.
- She has one fit of "MAMA" crying but makes it to dinner.
- A bath, a snack, and a few videos of Megan talking to her calm her down enough for bed.
- The following exchange happens for the first at least a 50 times over the next few days:
     - T: Mama?
     - Me: She's not here
     - T: Guh guh? (Which is "big brother" in Mandarin)
     - Me: He's not here either
     - T: Oh (with a sad look on her face)
- Thankfully, she sleeps through the night but insists on having Elmo (one of Ezra's toys) with her to help her sleep.

Sunday:
- It snows!!! WHY THE SNOW?!
- We go to church. Thaliea does great at childcare.
- I'd set up lunch with a friend of mine so after church we head to the restaurant. Thaliea falls asleep on the way there so lunch is cut VERY short.
- Thaliea wakes up just as I'm pulling back into the house... that nap was NOT long enough.
- The power goes out. THE POWER GOES OUT!
- We go to the Children's museum for a few hours so she can burn off some energy running around indoors. We can't go outside because IT'S STILL SNOWING.

- We come home and the power is still out. We go out to eat since I can't use the microwave, the oven, or open the fridge too many times.
- We come home and have an early bedtime since it's dark and there are no lights. She falls asleep looking at photos of Ezra.
- About 10pm I decide that it's getting too cold for her to stay in the house overnight. I book a hotel.
- She doesn't do well at the hotel but we eventually get to sleep.

Monday:
- Continental breakfast at the hotel then off to daycare.
- After I pick her up from daycare, we head to the mall to walk around.
- We share a quesadilla and a pretzel.
- It's supposed to be bath night but by the time we get home, she's so toast then it's straight to bed.

- Another good night of sleep.

Tuesday:
- I let her sleep in a bit then it's off to daycare.
- After I pick her up, we come home for a dinner of homemade chicken noodle soup and peas.
- The weather is nice so we go for a walk.
- The bath cannot wait... and she does great!
- Jammies, a snack, some more videos of Ezra, and she sleeps like a log.

- Until 4 this morning when she wakes up screaming. What's interesting is that she woke up yelling for me instead of Mama. I'm able to put her back to sleep.

So, here we are on Wednesday. She made it to daycare again fine and I'll be picking her up later. She'll be asleep by the time Megan and Ezra get back to Omaha but she'll have all on Thursday to play together.

All said and done, it's been a pretty good past few days. Thaliea and I have had a lot of fun bonding together and I'd like to think we handled the power outage as well as we could have. Parenting success! =0).

Have an excellent day!

~Adam