Click Me!
This past weekend passed in a bit of a blur.
My wife had a bridal shower in the city of Chicago. Well, a bridal shower weekend, really. As my sister lives in Chicago right now, I figured we might as well pop on down as well and do an overnight with her family. This would give us the opportunity to do a lot of things that the calculus of time and naps had not really allowed us to do on a day trip. Museums, aquariums, and the like.
My sister doesn’t actually live in Chicago. She’s in one of the many suburbs just outside of the city, but still within spitting distance of the trains if she wanted to get into Town. Either the train or a drive will add tens of minutes onto either end of a trip. Add that to a two hour trip to get to her place and a normal arrival time of 10:30 to 11 AM, divided by our daughter’s need for a nap and multiplied by her usual reluctance to take one, and you wind up with a situation that doesn’t lend itself to exploring the Windy City.
Overnights, on the other hand, change the balance of the equation to your favor.
So my daughter and I spent the night at my sister’s place. The next day we ventured out into the city. Due to the Curse of Bono, we found ourselves paying EXORBITANT fees for parking. On the other hand, his Blessings brought a much lighter crowd at the Shedd than we’d otherwise experience.
Oh Bono, is there nothing you can’t ruin/fix?
In any case, we had a good time. A napless time, but a good time. We traveled back home Saturday evening, giving us all of Sunday to run errands and see our local friends.
It was a pretty good weekend really. The part that just about killed me happened on Sunday. My daughter was just off enough from her schedule that the Sunday attempt at a nap ended up being a wash as well. I let her play around in her room for about 45 minutes or so, and then threw in the towel. I had things to do, stuff to get from the library, and items to return to Walmart. So I went and got her. She behaved herself reasonably well at the library, only pitching a fit when I wouldn’t read her a third story. She still seemed like she was going strong.
Somewhere in the fifteen minutes between the library and Walmart, she fell asleep.
“Well,” I thought to myself, “she’ll wake up when I open the car door to take her out.”
She didn’t. In fact I was able to unbuckle her, lift her up out of the seat and cradle her against my chest. I was then able to walk into the Walmart, return my item, purchase some early Halloween supplies, and leave, all with her asleep against my shoulders.
This…this is practically unheard of in my child’s brief life. She’s always been a bit of a light sleeper. Changes in light, loud sounds, motion…all of these bring her to full consciousness in the merest fraction of a second.
It gets better. I walk out to the car, put her back in the car seat, buckle her in, put the items in the trunk, return a cart to the corral, start the car and drive off…all with her asleep.
We make it all the way home without a peep. I quickly leave her in the car, duck inside to put the dogs in the backyard so they won’t wake her up with their enthusiasm, and return to attempt an unprecedented sleepy-time transfer from the car seat to her bed upstairs.
Previous attempts had never made it past unbuckling, but within moments I was cradling a sleeping child in my arms.
I made it inside!
I made it to the stairs and opened the first gate!
I climbed up the creaky stairs to the second floor!
I walk to the end of the squeeky hallway.
I go to open the baby gate in front of her door. The door behind was open. The bed was waiting.
BAM! Eyes open, crying and fussing at the indignity of being put to bed.
And before you ask, I did put her down in the bed and tried walking away for a little while. No dice. Once the kid is up, she’s up.
