Jacksonville 2013

Finally we had our trip to Jacksonville to visit my grandparents! I'm so glad we've been able to make it every year for the past few years. Mira and I flew out first since Mark wasn't able to get as much time off work. I'd been telling Mira every day for a couple of weeks leading up to the trip that we would be flying on an airplane and she'd be alternately excited or worried but obviously she didn't know what flying on an airplane was all about. She's flown before but this would be the first time she would actually kind of comprehend the experience. I was excited for that but also very anxious about how well she would handle being confined in a chair for almost 5 hours all told. I packed Benadryl just in case.

Mark had said that he wished he could see how she did when the plane took off and I'd been wondering if I would dare defy the FAA and record her reaction during takeoff but luckily, literally just a few days before we left, the FAA and Delta decided it would be safe to use electronics on an airplane for the entire flight. Turned out I didn't have to worry about getting in trouble with the government after all!

Taxiing on the runway.

And surprisingly the flight went quite smoothly. Mira played on the iPad for most of the flight and was perfectly happy with that. We had a connection in Atlanta that ended up being about how I'd envisioned. It was a tight connection to begin with but out flight was a little late getting in so I really did end up having to carry Mira while I sprinted through a crowded airport because, as I'd suspected, we had to go from the far end on one terminal, take the subway to the next terminal, and then go to the far end of that terminal. Mira probably loved the "choo choo" more than the plane ride. I was really glad I'd packed plenty of snacks because our connection was so close I didn't have time to buy us lunch. But typically, Mira did much better than I'd expected and we made it to Jacksonville unscathed.

Mira decided right away that she loved Paw Paw and it wasn't long before she was following him everywhere, inviting herself onto his lap, and making him read her books a few dozen times. It always amazes me how social and friendly she is.

And eventually she was getting him to dance with her.

One of the best parts of visiting my grandparents is being able to just chill out - and the first day we were there that's really all we did, which was nice.

Here is one of the very best parts of my grandparents' house - a traditional Japanese breakfast. I continue to maintain my stance that everyone should have a Japanese grandmother.

And since November in Florida means temperatures in the 70s, I took Mira to the beach. I thought she'd have the most fun playing in the sand. Mark's parents have a sandbox in their backyard and every time we go to visit Mira makes a beeline for that sandbox, and what else is a beach but the ultimate sandbox? Mira was so excited she ran as fast as she could to get to the beach. As you can see, I had some trouble keeping up with her.

Turned out she was WAY more excited about the water than the sand. I hadn't really dressed her for swimming since the water wasn't exactly warm but I'd expected we'd get our feet wet. Oh my goodness, she absolutely loved the water!

The next thing I knew, her shorts got wet from a particularly big wave. Next thing I knew, she got knocked over and got completely soaked - and thought it was the best thing ever! I should have just gotten her in a bathing suit to start off. She had such a fun time and even when her lips were purple and she was shivering the only way I could convince her to leave the beach was to promise her we'd come back the next day with Daddy. We'll definitely have to bring her back in the summer when the water is warm.

So as promised the next day when Mark showed up we took Mira back to the beach, but it was cold and windy and definitely not good beach weather. Mira still threw a fit when it was time to leave and we had to promise yet again that we would come back the next day. I think I need to sign her up for swim lessons because clearly this girl would live in water if she could.

Poor Mark had a rough time. He's been having lots of back pain the past few months (more than he normally does) and so the day before he flew out he had had steroids injected into his back. After the injections he went to a concert (all hail Rob Zombie and Korn, apparently), and then after the concert he took the red-eye flight out so besides being stuck in a spacious, comfortable airplane seat for hours (haha) he was doing it all on no sleep. So it wasn't a huge surprise for me that by the next day he was in a lot of pain. I felt bad for him but he was stoic as always.

The next day was warm and sunny again so at least it was good beach weather for Mira.

It might have come to your attention, based on the pictures and videos, that we were the only humans getting in the water. There were plenty of people on the beach but no one else was getting wet. The water really wasn't cold and since it had been snowing in Utah when we left for our trip, 70s felt really warm to us! My uncle, who also lives in Jacksonville, was surprised when we told him we'd gone to the beach and was downright appalled when we found out we'd actually (gasp!) gotten in the water. Apparently Jacksonville was in the middle of a cold snap when we chose to brave it and get in the ocean in November.

It wouldn't be a proper trip to Florida without our annual trek to St. Augustine. We didn't really get the chance to do much in the way of sight-seeing or exploring since we had Mira (who by now was chronically sleep-deprived because she'd gone almost a week without a nap when she normally gets a 2-3 hour nap every day) but we did some walking around along the oldest street in the oldest city in the country, went to a new pirate-themed museum, ate lunch at our favorite restaurant (even though they don't serve gator tails any more - boo), and - the highlight of the whole trip for Mira - rode a red choo-choo train around the town. Even though we've made 4 trips to St. Augustine now, we always leave feeling like there was so much more we could have seen. I told Mark that next year we'll have to time our trip with some other family members so we could leave Mira with them to allow the two of us a proper sight-seeing trip. The very first time Mark and I came out to St. Augustine I was about 11 weeks pregnant and was feeling so sick it was hard to concentrate on much besides keeping my Zofran down and was so tired I almost fell asleep on a very uncomfortable stone bench in the middle of the Castillo de San Marcos. So even though technically we have been to St. Augustine without Mira it doesn't really count because she was making me feel so icky.

Here for your viewing pleasure are a lot of pictures from St. Augustine.

The ORIGINAL "Jolly Roger." Awesome, right? It's believed the name "Jolly Roger" came from the French "jolie rouge," or "pretty red," as the flags pirates flew were red and then later had the skull and crossbones.

The original gates to the city.

Same shot but in black and white - because anything old looks awesome in black and white.

The Castillo de San Marcos.

The first time Mira conked out on the train.

At the Santa Maria restaurant.

Pretending to be a pirate - she was trying to pull her hair across her face like an eyepatch.

That binkie ended up in her mouth more and more just to try and prevent meltdowns. Look how tired she is.

I tricked her into trying a lemon...

...and she decided she liked it. Joke's on me.

My grandfather gave Mark his cane for the day to help him out with all the walking.

The second time she conked out. Poor baby.

After that it was nice to spend a slower-paced day at the house. Mira also got some pretty awesome new dresses from her great-grandparents. She was so excited with each one it was hard to convince her to try on the next one.

I can't get over how grown up she looks!

Every time we tell her to smile she does that with her fingers. So cute!

And then she got goofy and wanted to run around with no clothes on but accessorized with her new pink Hello Kitty backpack. It's getting to be such a wrestling match to hold her down so I can get her dressed that sometimes it's easier to just let it go - plus this was so silly. :)

Backpacks work best when they're upside down, in case you're wondering.

Mira had a really fun time taking pictures on my phone, and some of them are actually pretty decent. Here are her photographic attempts:

She also took about 500 short videos of herself, and I promise someday soon I will splice them together to make one video instead of 25 one-second clips. Believe me when I say they are really cute but for now I'll just have to show this.

And some pictures of my family.

Mira snuggled up to her Great-Aunt Phyllis - she just loves everybody!

Mira and her Paw.

Unfortunately by the end of the week Mira was one giant tantrum from all the excitement and lack of sleep.

Poor thing. But maybe I can use these pictures to embarrass her when she's old, heh heh heh.

Sadly, as it tends to happen, our trip came to an end way too soon. I'm always sad to leave family. I think my grandfather had the hardest time - he and Mira had become really attached to each other over the last week. My grandmother sent me home with some Japanese staples to get me by for a little while (miso soup and nori) and instructions to take good care of myself. Hopefully our next trip back isn't too far off so we can get Mira and her Paw teamed back up again.

Mira did fairly well on the flight to Atlanta. She took some more pictures and played on the iPad some more.

The problems started at the Atlanta airport. She wanted to go back to Paw's house and was crushed when we told her we weren't going back to Paw's house. She wanted to go back to Paw's house, not our house. Since she was so tired it was downhill from there, and fast. We had a couple hours between flights so we went to a food court for dinner. For once we didn't have to take the subway to go between terminals but not getting on the train caused a meltdown for Mira. Standing in line waiting for food was a meltdown for Mira. By the time we sat down at a table to eat she was so tired all she could do was cry. Actually, I take that back. She was so tired all she could do was scream and hit and throw and kick - she didn't even know why she was acting out at that point but it was all she was capable of. The pitiful part is that I was tired and exhausted and stretched thin myself so I wasn't even capable of dealing with Mira in the most appropriate way. Taking your kid on vacation really isn't much of a vacation. Parenting is hard. Taking your kid on vacation isn't a vacation from parenting, therefore it's still hard. This was even harder because Mira didn't nap (which is usually my time to take a breather and recharge), she went to bed late and often woke up in the middle of the night to look for me. I think most moms who read this will understand me when I say I felt like, despite the change in scenery and getting to see my family, I didn't actually get a break. I absolutely and completely love my daughter, but she is exhausting!

Anyway, the point of all that is that when Mira had her total and complete apocalyptic nuclear meltdown in the food court in the Atlanta airport, I just couldn't handle it anymore. Yes, I will admit it, I had my own little meltdown too. I had run out of patience and didn't have the energy or the desire to handle Mira the way I should have. Let me tell you, it's hard to choke down a hamburger when you're also trying to choke down the biggest cry in recent memory. Mark of course has seemingly unending patience for Mira's tantrums and was able to handle her much better. I don't know how he's able to stay so patient with Mira all the time but I need to figure it out for myself. I like to tell myself that I'm a very patient person but I'm also a bit (or maybe a lot) high-strung, which doesn't always serve me well in situations like this one. So he went to solve the immediate problem by going to hunt down French fries for Mira since those are a food that she will eat 99.9% of the time and she was refusing everything else we had for her. To be perfectly honest, I felt like the world's most inadequate mother at that moment. Here I was having a meltdown because my daughter was having a meltdown, which put me at her level, and at the time I felt unsupported, although in reality Mark was just having to focus all his attention and energy on Mira since I was clearly not being much help. Thank goodness he was able to keep it together. Maybe that's his cop training that makes it so he can stay unruffled in incredibly stressful situations. 

Once he had left the table a mother with about 3 young kids at a nearby table (who had clearly watched this train wreck go down) came up with one of those prepackaged cheese and cracker snack packs and asked me if it was okay if she offered it to Mira. I was so flummoxed that a stranger would do that. So while I blew my nose and composed myself this sweet woman helped Mira open the package and actually got her to eat the whole thing. She went back to her own kids, Mark came back with the French fries and was able to convince Mira to eat some of those too, and pretty soon it was time for us to catch our next plane. As we were standing up the mother came up to me with another snack pack for me to whip out during the next flight and told me "Good luck!" All I could say was "Thank you," and that seemed so inadequate for what she had done. I have never been so completely overwhelmed and touched by the actions of a complete stranger before. I had been beating myself up for not being able to be a halfway competent mother, and it would have been so easy for me to compare the disaster at our table to the well-behaved children at that other table and feel even worse about my inabilities. But I'm pretty sure that mother had gone through situations very similar to mine before and that was why she did what she did. And I bet there are (very few) times when I'm out in public with Mira and other moms are envious of how well she's behaving. (I doubt it but you never know.) It was a good dose of perspective for me.

Even if my perspective was a little clearer it didn't solve the problem of Mira being difficult. Mark took over with Mira so I could get a bit of a break and did everything he could think of to keep her distracted but by the time we got on the plane Mira was not pleased with anything, even though we gave her everything she wanted to try and calm her down. Finally I set her on my lap and rocked her, and no joke she had passed out within a couple of minutes. She was so tired her pacifier fell out of her mouth and she didn't even notice.

Clearly I was tired too.

As frustrating as she had been, there is nothing as sweet as having your baby snuggled into your neck, and I can't even remember the last time she'd slept on my chest. Oh, how I've missed that! She slept with her head in my lap for almost the entire flight, which gave Mark and me the chance to watch the in-flight movie uninterrupted, so it was sort of like a date! Mira woke up in time to watch the plane land. She still wasn't too keen on the idea of going home but her long nap had definitely calmed her down, and once we got home she got excited about all her toys that she hadn't seen in a week and wanted to play with all of them, and there were the cats and dogs too. So she made the transition fairly well. I've been showing her pictures of her great-grandpa so she doesn't forget him in the meantime. Today she was eating nori like it was candy (she might only be 1/8th Japanese but she loves Japanese food!) and she remembered on her own that it came from "Paw's house."

Unfortunately since the trip she's almost completely given up her naps. She napped for almost 4 hours the first day back but since then she's napped not even half the time. The surprising part is she seems to be handling it really well. As in, she's still in a good mood by the end of the day and I've only put her to bed early a couple of times. I'm not ready to admit she's outgrown naptime yet... that would mean she's growing up some more... but on the other hand I've been feeling lately that our schedule is a bit constrained by naptime so maybe it's good that this is happening. We'll see.

I'll end with this picture because it's just too funny. This was after one of her increasingly fewer naps. She had insisted on wearing her sunglasses to bed. When she got up I sat her on her potty and the whole thing was just too hilarious.

And on another random side note, I took her to get her flu shot the day after we got back. I didn't tell her until they got us in the room that she was going to get a small little owie in her leg but I would hug her the whole time. And the medical assistant added that afterwards she would get a sticker and a sucker. She was not sure what to make of this information and I was ready for her to freak out, but believe it or not, she didn't cry at all. I was so impressed! And she would have gone through anything to get a sticker and a sucker. She saved her sticker and every time she sees it she remembers the owie she got in her leg.

She might be a brat sometimes (I'll talk more about that in my next post) but she is unbelievably cute and I can't believe how much I love her.