We Had Joy, We Had Fun, We Had Beer and Ba-Con

(My apologies to Terry Jacks for the post title.)

First. No more long trips with almost 11-month old. For the plane ride to Ontario, 2 weeks ago, Trombone was terrific. We plyed him with crackers, cheerios, fruit, books with pull-back-tabs, toys he hadn’t seen before and he bought it all, hook, line and peek-a-block. Then, we stuck him in a carseat every day and drove all over the place. We had a few clues that his tolerance for “hey, want a cracker?” and other such distractions had grown to monstrous proportions. There was the day, earlier this week, when we drove for a measly 4 hours and he spent one of those hours saying, “Ma-ma-ma-mAMAMAMA-ma-ma-ma-ma-MA!” no matter what we offered. There was also the tossing of distractable offerings over the edge of the carseat. And the refusal to fall asleep in the van, even to the sweet strains of his grandmother doing chickadee calls (dammit, it worked great the first week!)

It’s amazing how quickly kids grow. 2 weeks ago he was a baby who liked to move around some. Today on the flight home, he was a squirmy, twitchy toddler who, when I tried to prevent him from petting the toupe of the man in front of us, bellowed, “MAWAMAMAWABOBOTHBBBBBBT!” (seriously the babbling is starting to scare me. It sometimes sounds so angry, like the mentally ill people who talk to themselves in doorways downtown. MumblemumblemumblemumbleQUARTER!mumblemumbleDAMNYOU!mumblemumbleWHATAREYOULOOKINGAT! That’s what is sounds like! From a cute baby!) startling everyone on the plane from their ginger ale stupors to cast wary glances our way.

“Is your kid gonna yell the whole way?”
“Not if you give him your toupe to play with.”

5 hours and 20 minutes is a lot of time. If we ever go to Europe, we are taking the train. The Europe train.

But then, oh, then, we landed in Vancouver, the very best city to land in. It’s all green and blue and today a little grey but bright with promise. And we got off the plane and put Trombone in his stroller and he delighted in no longer being trapped in our arms and we delighted in no longer having to wrestle him between us while he smeared us with cookie and slobber and bellow.

Second. I am so tired. We got up at 4:25 this morning. No, it’s not that much earlier than the 5 am of the previous several days (baby’s fault) but it also is, you know? 5 am is in one category and anything that starts with “4” is in a different category.

We had a fabulous vacation. There were so many people and so much bacon. I can hardly believe it’s been two weeks. Except that our house feels incredible because we stayed at 3 different houses over the two weeks we were away and nothing says comfort like your own kitchen with your own chips in it. I opened all the cupboards this afternoon, finding things I’d forgotten. “Crackers! Popcorn! We’re RICH!”

Trombone did the baby equivalent. He crawled around like a mad thing and exclaimed over each of his forgotten toys.

“O! Penguin Lego container! O! 40 bazillion other books I love! O! My maracas!”

O! It is a fine thing to be home.