Thinking of traveling with a toddler without your partner?

My advice is – don’t do it! Ok, my current situation has the added dimensions of my being 6 months pregnant and my toddler having just hit the psychological stage requiring him to say no to everything asked. I must admit that these two things greatly influence my recommendation above. And it is a hard recommendation, indeed, as I take pride in my independence and adventure and do not like the idea of my being homebound unless another adult assists with travel. In fact, my son and I have traveled multiple times by car and plane without the assistance of “daddy” and up to this stage its been fairly well managed.

So, the three of us get to the airport one bright shiny morning to find very long lines for check in. My son is not too keen on staying in his stroller as that is what we would like him to do, so A (my husband) decides to wait with us until we pass through security. We endure the lines of both check-in and security which requires one to keep line placement and the other to run after the toddler. Once arriving at the place where non-travelers are no longer welcomed, my husband and I switch baggage, i.e. things in my hand for wiggly toddler in his and say goodbye. Despite the long wait, things are going well until I need to put all of my items, many as they are, into the bins for x-ray. This requires getting my son out of the stroller and convincing him to take off his shoes. He is not happy about removing his shoes and proceeds to fight me on it while impatient on-lookers behind me await my success. At this very moment, amid the struggle and our personal items making their way to the x-ray machine, I realize that I’m missing my very essential bag – you know, the one with our TICKETS, my wallet and the all-important travel toys!! During the hand-off, “A” must have taken it. Sweat breaks out, panic takes hold and a quick mental deduction tells me that we will in fact be missing our plane scheduled to depart in 45 minutes. The two sympathetic men behind me (obviously fathers) calmly instruct me to leave the stroller by the wall and “RUN” to find my husband. I swoop up my son (who is ornery and crying at this point because he doesn’t want to take off his shoes) and bolt down the narrow terminal hallway cramped with security line passengers. Thankfully within seconds I see my husband running with lightening speed towards me. I grab the bag, a quick reassuring hug, a laugh and turn with everything in arms, including my son for security. We make it through and to our gate in time and I am relieved but very tired and a bit rattled.

We wanted to watch the planes take off for as long as possible and so decide to board last. Once on board, I realize one of our seats is filled. I let the attendant know this and within moments I hear over the intercom that the plane is overbooked and would anyone like to step off for a free plane ticket. Meanwhile, I stand next to the bathroom monitoring “the boy” as he runs up the aisles, deciding whether to laugh or cry. Of course by this time I think my husband is long gone in the car. I decide to laugh at the comedy of it all and luckily a nice man gets up and we are saved.

After some rearranging we take our seats and I am so relieved to sit down as both the weight of my son and my “in utero” 25 week old have taken their toll. All I want is a warm cup of coffee – but there is MUCH to do before that big payoff. We need to get ample toys out, have a chat about seatbelts and why one needs to stay in their seat for take-off, change a diaper in an airplane bathroom (toddler standing on toilet technique) and relieve myself while my son jumps around the 1 x 2 ft space in front of the toilet.

The coffee arrives and I am in heaven. It even tastes good – a benefit I was willing to forego. My son is happily playing with his cars in his window seat. I’ve got him boxed in, of course, in an effort to minimize the bother to the UPenn, extremely hungover, college student directly to my right. Ahhhhh the coffee is good and I am happy. But OH – all of the sudden my son has some sort of hormone surge and needs a hug immediately! He jumps up and leaps towards me screaming “hug, hug, hug”… I grab him as to comfort and his left foot comes swinging around, hits the coffee cup and the content flies all over my right arm and yes, you guessed it – the sleeping college student. Not good.

Now I could go on for a while but these are the funnier, in retrospect, events of our flight down to see Grandma. I’m not really recommending that you not travel with your two year old but I am saying that it’ll help to be psychologically prepared for the event. In the end it was truly worth it and a great time on the beach with family…...

The Granola Recipe

Emily’s Baked Granola
Modified from The Kripalu Cookbook

6 cups rolled oats
1 ½ cups pumpkin seeds
1 cup flax seeds
1 ½ sunflower seeds
1 cup sesame seeds
1 cup pecans, chopped
1 cup walnuts, chopped
2 cups blanched almonds, chopped or in slivers
2 cups shredded coconut

½ cup barley malt
¼ cup honey
1/3 cup canola oil
1 ¼ cup maple syrup
2 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
A little cinnamon
A little salt

Chopped dates
Raisins or currents

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. In a large bowl, combine all the dry ingredients. In a separate bowl combine all the wet ingredients. Add the wet mixture to the dry and combine well.

Spread the mixture into a large baking sheet with tall sides and bake for up to 50 mins. Check the mixture every 20 mins and rotate the mixture in the pan so the bottom doesn’t over brown. When mixture is lightly browned, remove from oven. Let cool for 30 mins. Granola will harden and darken as it cools.

Mix in the raisins and dates and serve immediately or store in airtight, sealable container after it’s cooled completely.

Best of the Web - 2007

To keep you hip to what's cool on the internet, here are a few great summary pages.

Best of YouTube 2007
I could watch the tetris one over and over. Don't quite get the chocolate rain one but it kicked off a phenomenon, so you have to watch it at least once.

As an aside, I wish this video ranked up there:


South by Southwest 2007 Website winners These are great sites. These are the change-makers.

Webby Awards 2007 More conventional, better known. Some of the "bests" are debatable.

Eight Annual Weblog Awards This is the most relevant award list for us authors of this blog to read. There are amazing blogs recognized - great for browsing, discovering new sites, interesting activity going on on the web.

What are your favorites? Let's discuss.

p.s. This blog didn't rank in any "best of's" but it's pretty darn clever and so close to home it hurts.

Inspirational Quotes re. Persistance

“It always seems impossible until its done.”

Nelson Mandela

"Never allow a person to tell you no who doesn't have the power to say yes.”
Eleanor Roosevelt

"Hey, you never know."
New York Lotto slogan

Banter and blog posts

Has been a poor showing from me on the blog lately. Blame it on the stars, the endocrine system, the time change. Hard to say why the pause from posting much, but my once fool-proof method of thinking, "what did I do today that went well...blog about it" has failed me of late.


Actually, it's mostly because my good advice lately has to do primarily to do with work, getting to work or feeding myself at work. Since my fellow blog-girls don't work in an office, it's feel somewhat useless in this space. But, I'm wondering, is the not blogging about the pointless work-efficiencies holding up the better more useful flow?

Anyway, here's my dumb good advice du jour:

- keep granola and yogurt at work in the work fridge. you'll never regret it and will start everyday well balanced. I will post the granola recipe later from the downstairs computer.

- have a folder on the toolbar of your internet browser called "everyday". put your sites in there you like to visit to start the day. keep an eye on the clock and stay within a reasonable time period (like 15 mins). good way to warm up the brain and something do to while eating granola. I typically check my email accounts, facebook, nytimes, wsj and my horoscope. on a slow day I'll also check in with Perez.

- make a little extra dinner in the evening and then take it to work the next day (this is probably something you're already doing if you like to pack your lunch, I know. Just trying to slay the demons)

- read perez at lunch. do it on the sly. somehow gossip's better when you're sneaking around.

- IM with the hubby, very briefly everyday. better than a phone call and good way to get essential information to one another, i.e. "need milk on way home." "okay". also pretty fun to do on the sly.

- keep a stocked diaper bag in the car at all times. gives you the freedom to change plans on the fly and keeps your child tended to. keep an extra set of clothes for him/her in there, too. where I live, the beach is luckily almost never out of the question.

that's all I have today. hope it helps someone somewhere and if nothing else opens up something better tomorrow.

If you are the Gov. known for ethics

Get your booty calls at home.

Random things that are probably obvious to everyone but me

* Frozen chicken breasts should always be kept on hand for those dinners you forget to plan

* LL Bean tote bags are fantastic after you've washed and dried them in the dryer

* Yogurt squeezers are really great frozen

* To get a disagreeable toddler to cooperate, singing the same song to them when doing the disagreeable act (changing the diaper, picking up crayons-toys-spilled green beans) is a pavlovian wonder spell

Finding Om in the Brillo Box

I skipped yoga this morning based on the thin excuse that there was too much snow for me to drive. Since I live in Maine and we've had about 30 feet of snow this season already, this is especially weak, but my husband was being sweet and it was my son's first day of swim lessons - how could I abandon them for a sweaty mat and some hip opening contortions?

So, instead, I made them omelets. Recently I read this article in Gourmet about one man's obsessive crusade to make the perfect omelet. I had never thought much about how to make an omelet but now I view it as a work of great art. My first, by the way was a dud, but the second one was much improved.

The real highlight of breakfast wasn't the omelet. It was the cleaning of the omelet pan. Not the inside - that part is Teflon and cleans in a snap. It was scrubbing the bottom. I'm not quite sure how this particular pan had gotten so nasty but it was dark and various shades of dark brown to black. I went in with a vengeance with my new-found-love the Brillo Pad. My mom used to always have some on hand and I remember the joy of getting hard to clean pots clean. This past thanksgiving my sibs and I stayed in the home of a fellow clean freak and discovered her stash of the Brillo. Oh, the joy! I forgot about this ingenious cleaning tool for I had been toiling away with the green scrubby for most of my adult life. I spent a good fifteen minutes putting serious arm muscle into the job, mindful to keep my shoulders relaxed, my hips aligned and my jaw relaxed. I went in circles this way and that and in this cleaning trance, the shiny, gleaming lovely All-clad omelet pan revealed itself to me. I saw my reflection in the bottom and as it happened, Krishna Das was chanting from the stereo. I had found my yoga moment after all.