Tales from Vacation- Shit My Dad Fucked Up

I think I've made it pretty clear that my dad is essentially useless. There is a time, though, when his lack of a permanent address works in my favor and he can make himself useful. And by "useful" I mean he goes from full-on parasite mode to some sort of half-assed symbiotic relationship with the people he leaches goods, services, and nights on their couch from.

What I'm saying is that I asked my dad to take care of my pets while I was on vacation.

I should have known better. Do you remember that one time I went on vacation, and when I came home he informed me that he was kicked out by the relative he was staying with at the time and he had all his shit at my house and expected me to let him live there for a while? Yeah. I definitely should have known better.

Anyway. So my dad's current ... let's call it vocation ... is driving a taxi in tourist trap/Jersey Shore locale, Seaside Heights. He works overnights because that is when all the drunks want to be carted around, obviously. I didn't anticipate this being an issue. He told me he would come over in the morning and walk my dog and feed both of my pets when he got out of work. His taxi job is a solid hour and 15 minutes from where I live, but he always makes a show of how much he loves driving, so again, I figured it would be fine.

Cut to a couple of days into vacation. I had called him once or twice to check in, and he told me everything was fine. On this day though, he called me. We had the following conversation (and yes, in case you were wondering, pretty much everything I said, I was shouting at him, hence the all caps):

Dad: Hi Jaclyn. You really need to let your friend know not to lock your cat in the bedroom.

Me: What are you talking about?

Dad: Well, whoever else is coming here must have locked her in the bedroom and she pissed all over your bed (PISSED ALL OVER YOUR BED???????????????? FUCKING REALLY DUDE. THIS IS NOT SOMETHING YOU BRING UP CASUALLY AND WITHOUT A DROP OF GUILT).

Me: THE CAT PISSED "ALL OVER" MY BED? ARE YOU KIDDING ME????

Dad: Well I guess whoever was in here locked her in there.

Me: YOU WERE THE ONLY ONE THERE- NO ONE ELSE IS GOING TO MY HOUSE!

Dad: Oh, really? I figured you had Nadine or someone else coming too.

Me: NO!

Dad: Oh. Well, someone else was definitely in the house, Jaclyn. It wasn't me. The bedroom door was open when I left. Someone must have broken in. Did you leave your windows unlocked?

Me: SOMEONE BROKE IN, NOT TO STEAL ANYTHING, BUT TO LOCK MY CAT IN THE BEDROOM? ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?

Dad: I don't know. It had to be someone else though. Maybe it was the landlord. Maybe Joey was barking and he came in to check on him.

Me: NO ONE ELSE WAS IN MY HOUSE.

Dad: Well, Joey got out of the kitchen- he was walking around the house when I got there. Maybe he pushed the door closed. You know how he does that sometimes (bold-faced lie. I can't tell you of a single time when my dog pushed a fucking door closed. NOT A SINGLE TIME).

Me: JOEY DIDN'T LOCK THE CAT IN THE BEDROOM EITHER! MY MATTRESS IS LIKE 6 MONTHS OLD AND NOW I HAVE TO THROW IT OUT- CAT PEE STINK NEVER GOES AWAY!

Dad: Oh don't worry, it's fine. I cleaned it, and I'm going to wash your sheets and your mattress cover.

Me: Cleaned it with what (this was a legitimate concern, because his idea of "washing" anything means soaking it in bleach. Even his feet. I wish I were kidding)???

Dad: Oh, I took some rubbing alcohol and wiped it on the stain.

Me: REALLY? ARE YOU KIDDING ME? RUBBING ALCOHOL? MY ENTIRE BEDROOM IS GOING TO SMELL LIKE CAT PISS AND RUBBING ALCOHOL! WHY THE HELL WOULD YOU USE FUCKING RUBBING ALCOHOL?

Dad: Well, I figured you didn't want me to use bleach.

Me: MY MATTRESS IS RUINED, ISN'T IT?

Dad: It's fine!

I got off the phone with him and ranted to everyone for 10 minutes about what an incompetent douche bag he is. Everyone agreed, naturally. After that, I tried to put it out of my mind and enjoy the rest of vacation, but in the back of my head, I was constantly wondering what the hell I would be going home to. This was especially true a couple of days later, when April called him to ask about HER cat and HER house (because he agreed to catsit for her as well) and he informed her, completely ignoring her questions about her own home/pet, that my house was "a disaster" and that my dog had gotten out again and broken something. I was not exactly looking forward to going home after that:

The first thing I noticed when I walked in my door was actually the LACK of mess. My dad is a known slob and he doesn't usually have the courtesy, even in someone else's home, to not throw his clothes and garbage everywhere, so the fact that things looked relatively uncluttered surprised me. He must have realized how pissed I was about the mattress. Ah, the mattress. I needed to assess the damage and decide if I was sleeping on the couch tonight and how much I could afford to spend on a new one.

Again, I was shocked. "Pissed all over your mattress" is pretty definitive, I would say, to indicate that something has been ruined beyond repair, but surprisingly my mattress looked (and smelled!) fine. There was a small yellowish stain that smelled a little like the rubbing alcohol he used to clean it, but it looked like the mattress pad kept the pee from soaking through to the actual mattress surface. So far, so good.

The relief I felt knowing I wouldn't have to throw my mattress away disintegrated immediately when I walked into my kitchen and realized that, just 3 weeks after moving in, I could say for sure that I wouldn't be getting my security deposit back when I move out:

Me: Dad, what are those dark spots on the floor?

Dad: Oh, that's where Joey peed.

Me: I thought you said he didn't pee in the house. And why does it look like it seeped completely under the (very expensive looking) tiles? How long did you leave it there before you cleaned it up?

Dad: Oh, that was my fault. He peed on the floor twice, but those were the days I didn't get back here for like 20 hours or something like that.

Me: 20 HOURS? WHY DIDN'T YOU COME BACK FOR 20 HOURS?

Dad: Well I ran late at work.

Me: 20 consecutive hours late? Why didn't you tell me if you thought you couldn't do it every day?

Dad: I'm not saying I couldn't do it- I didn't mind- I just couldn't get here for a while!

Me: I could have sent someone else to at least take him out that day! That pee is under the tile and I'll never get it out. I'm going to lose my security!

Dad: Oh, come on. Your landlord isn't going to notice that!

Me: I noticed it the SECOND I walked in here!

Dad: I wouldn't worry about.

Me: Of course you wouldn't.

At this point, I asked about his "disaster" comment and he told me that the dog had knocked over Caitlyn's toy shopping cart and that the removable front piece came off. He realized after telling April that my shit was broken that it was actually completely fixable. It's sort of ironic. The two things he focused on- the mattress and a broken fucking shopping cart toy- were the very least of my worries.

Most of the destruction he caused was dog-related, but not in the way you might think. It wasn't the dog destroying things so much as it was him not paying a single second's worth of attention to the detailed instructions I gave him before leaving. For example:

• Joey had not been groomed in a while. He smelled pretty funky and his hair was too long with a few small knots that needed to be cut out. What can I say? I've been busy. Before I left, my dad insisted he was going to give Joey a bath. I told him that I appreciated that, but because Joey had some spots on him that were matted, I'd prefer he didn't. You see, I explained, when those spots get wet, then dry again, they tighten up and cause him pain, like his hair is being pulled, so I'd prefer to wait until I was able to give him a haircut before giving him a bath. "I'll give him a haircut!", my father insisted. Since I groom Joey at home, I directed him to the grooming kit I own and told him that he was more than welcome to give him a haircut if he had the time, knowing full well that he would absolutely not bother and hopefully just leave my poor dog alone. Of course, when I got home, he had given Joey a bath and no haircut. Which led to the next 5 problems on this list:
• Since I just moved, I had emailed my landlord a few days before vacation to let him know about a couple of small issues I was having, one of which was that my bathtub was clogged up, and also to let him know that my father would be at my house while I was away (it's a condo complex, and I don't know how nosy the neighbors are yet, so I wanted to let him know just in case anyone asked him who the old, homeless-looking dude was). He couldn't send someone to fix my tub until Sunday, the day after I left for vacation, which was fine, because my dad would be there to let them in. I spoke to my dad on Sunday evening, and he confirmed that all was well and that my bathtub was unclogged. Then he promptly gave my ungroomed, hairy dog a bath in there. He didn't even bother to wipe the dog hair out of the tub, despite claiming that he cleaned everything with bleach the day I got home (he made a point of telling me this because he wanted to prove that all my complaints about the overwhelming bleach smell I hate are exaggerated and that I wouldn't have even noticed if he hadn't pointed it out). My tub is now clogged again.
• I purchased a cute frog-shaped bath mat for my new house. It was only a few days old when I left. When I came home it was filthy and caked with soap and dog hair to the point of nearly gluing one of the frog's eyes shut.
• One of the first things I did after being home for a little while was get in the shower (to use my freshly reclogged bathtub!) and clear the road skank off of me. While in there, I noticed that half my bottle of body wash was gone. This was a brand new bottle. I believe I bought it on the same trip to Walmart as the bath mat. Anyone who uses body wash knows that a bottle usually lasts a couple of months, so I had to ask why so much was gone. Well, isn't it obvious? He used it to wash the dog (which also explains what was caked onto my bath mat)! Why would he use so much, you might wonder? Well, he was leaning over the bathtub and he couldn't really reach, so he just poured it onto him! Which leads us to...
• When I finally did get around to giving Joey a haircut last night, I found that, while the fur I was cutting off was certainly soft from the half gallon of body wash used to clean it, the stuff closer to his skin was matted to hell and covered in dandruff. Or maybe it was just dried up body wash. I also found a couple of scabs where he had clearly chewed his skin raw, probably because he had a reaction to the body wash, or, at best the fact that the body wash was not properly rinsed off of him. Oh, and the fur around his nails was pink, also seemingly blood-stained from him chewing them raw with itch. I also feel it's important to mention that I had not ONE but TWO full bottles of dog shampoo in my bathroom. One was in the medicine cabinet and the other was under the sink. But, I mean, who would look in literally the only two places I could store something in my bathroom for dog shampoo when there was a full bottle of body wash at his disposal! Vanilla and honey scented bloody paws are awesome!
• Another fun note from Joey's grooming last night- his dick was caked in piss. This has literally never happened before. I mean, I've certainly seem the remnants of drippage and the ends of his fur in that area, but I can't imagine a reason that the entire area was caked in a sticky, piss film. I have to assume leftover, unrinsed body wash was to blame because there is literally no other explanation. My POOR DOG!

And lastly, just to prove how deliberately he does things for spite:

• After the cat piss incident, he promised to wash my sheets and mattress cover. Which he did, but cat piss is a hard stench to get rid of, so my first thought was to smell the sheets, which he had left at the foot of my bed. "Don't worry", he assured me, "I put like 5 times more detergent than I was supposed to. The smell is gone". He was mostly right. The piss smell was gone. I can't say the same for the chemically Gain smell that I'm pretty sure I'll never get out (I really don't like chemically smells. I get unscented things whenever I can). And that is when I thought about it. I don't own scented detergent. Which wouldn't be that big a deal except for all the warnings and signs posted in the laundry room about the fact that the washers are high efficiency washers and using detergent that isn't labelled as such, along with using too much of any detergent, can break them. There are literally at least half a dozen signs specifying what kinds of detergent are safe to use, and noting that you shouldn't use more than 1/4 cup of even those high-efficiency detergents. So. Instead of using a reasonable amount of the HE detergent that I had, and maybe running it through the washer twice, he went out of his way to buy a scented detergent that wasn't safe for the machines in my laundry room and use it at 5 times the normal amount needed for a regular washing machine. He saw and ignored the signs, despite the fact that he must have realized that I would be responsible if he broke one of these expensive machines. Of course I asked him why he wouldn't just use the detergent I had, and again, he didn't see it (just like the dog shampoo). He saw the signs, he said, he just didn't bother to read them. Why would he? It's not like he's responsible for anything.

So. If you are thinking I should be more grateful, no matter how much of a bumbling idiot he is, that he was trying to help, maybe you need to read through this again. In fact, check here and here and here and here and here again too. I think I've learning my lesson this time. Nadine, you are officially on notice for dog sitting next time.

Tales From Vacation- Snack Attack (Which is Admittedly Weird, Especially Since There Was an Alligator)

Yesterday afternoon I got home after a week in Florida with my family. We had a great time and it was mostly drama-free, with a few noted exceptions. The first was car trouble. My youngest sister blew two tires on the highway on the way down, then inexplicably had a dead battery (not left-the-lights-on dead. Dead-dead. Needed a new battery dead) a couple of days later. She ended up shelling out nearly $400 in car repairs. Then Rodolfo's water pump died on his car when we were on our way back, an hour from home. That was also $400. So much for saving money by driving. The second mini-drama was related to my apparently calling my 2 year old niece morbidly obese or something and/or telling a grown man to stop calling a 13 year old boy a douche bag. Those blew over pretty quickly though.

The other little drama was snack-related. I'm sorry, did that last sentence sound as ridiculous to you as it did in my head? SNACK-RELATED DRAMA, you guys. Seriously. Let me take it from the beginning:

As I said, we were driving down. Myself, Caitlyn and Rodolfo in his car (yes, we are still separated, in case you were wondering), my mom, step-dad and oldest nephew in her car, our middle sister, her husband and their son in his car and my youngest sister, her boyfriend and their daughter in his car. 4 cars and 3 toddlers. So I decided to make little snack packs for all the kids. I bought ziploc bags and separated portions of goldfish, crackers, and veggie chips for each kid, then threw in a few packs of gummy snacks and juice boxes for everyone. I even made up a ziploc bag for each of them filled with some crayons and folded up paper so they would all have one more thing to keep them occupied for the long trip.

I'd thought of everything. The drinks were boxed, so no one needed to try to pour juice into a sippy cup in a moving car. The snacks were the least messy I could think of. I even provided activities! I was feeling very smug about the whole thing when I texted my mom and sisters to let them know that I'd provided snacks for all the kids, so they needn't worry about it. Obviously they were all grateful. Who wouldn't be?

The ensuing drama had nothing to do with the car snacks, honestly. Everyone loved my awesome car snacks. I only brought it up so you all know how incredibly efficient I am. Okay. Not really (maybe a little though). My point is that I had provided snacks, and I made everyone aware of that fact beforehand (a full 24 hours in advance, even, which is like an eternity in my procrastinatey family). That being said, when you have a toddler, you tend to plan for every scenario. I fully expected that my sisters would also bring snacks along, because what if my nephew decided he hated everything I brought? What if my niece... I don't know, fed all her snacks to an alligator or something (we actually had an alligator in our backyard and an old man standing at the edge of the swamp/lake just begging to be eaten)?

Anyway. We arrived Monday night and went grocery shopping for the week. It was just us girls at the store, and we decided to give Sammi a break, since she had all the car trouble, and split the bill between myself, my mom and my other sister, April (yeah. I'm just gonna use her name now. NO1CURR). So we went about finding what we thought we would need for the week.

Everyone had certain special things they wanted. I picked up some Kashi cereal bars I like, frozen smoothie mix for Rodolfo, and pickles for my burgers. Sammi wanted Fruit Loops and Ramen noodles. My mom... I don't even know, but I'm sure she picked up one certain thing that wouldn't have necessarily been on anyone else's list. Then there was April. Here is the list of things April needed specifically for herself and her family (I should emphasize that she did share if anyone wanted anything. It's not that she was being selfish in that way. She was just being selfish in the way that she made the rest of us split the cost of her excess):

Double-Stuff Oreos
Family Sized bag of M&Ms
Cheerios
Cinnamon Chex ("I need variety, Jaclyn", she responded pissily when I asked if we really needed 3 different kinds of cereal- "besides, I don't eat Fruit Loops")
Apples and Grapes
Coffeemate
2 boxes of frozen mini-pancakes (because despite the fact that we bought pancake mix, she insisted that her son would only eat the frozen mini ones)
Lysol Wipes (she insisted these were "for the house", even though everyone else thought paper towels were perfectly fine)

My mom and Sammi and I were annoyed, especially since Sammi, despite already being out $280 in car repairs at this point, had to practically be bound and gagged before she would let us pay for her fucking Fruit Loops and Ramen noodles. But it was April's vacation too. We all sort of rolled our eyes and moved on.

This is the point where you understand why I mentioned the car snacks I brought. Because when we got back and unpacked our groceries, everyone also started unpacking their personal stuff too. This is when we saw the stash of snacks that April had brought from home (please note that I don't mean she brought a few of anything. These were all regular sizes boxes of shit):

EL Fudge cookies
Chewy Chips Ahoy cookies
Teddy Grahams- vanilla
Teddy Grahams- chocolate
Wheat Thins
Assorted bag of Starbursts and Skittles (you know, those giant bags you buy to distribute for Halloween)

A full day passed before April became displeased with the "variety" of snacks available to her. I woke up Wednesday morning to see her returning from Target, where she bought:

Target bakery sugar cookies
Target bakery chocolate chip cookies
2 boxes of chocolate chip granola bars
2 family sized boxes of Pop-Tarts
Milano cookies
A giant bag of popcorn
A box of microwave popcorn
5 candy bars (these, she informed everyone, were just for her though- no sharing!)
a cheesecake
3 bags of assorted varieties of potato chips (family sized, of course)

If we had planned to stay for a month, this would still be an absolutely ridiculous amount of snacks. And we did actually buy food too! And soda. Seemingly gallons of it disappeared while we were there. I won't say I didn't eat any snacks or drink any soda. I certainly did, but if I'd had my way, I wouldn't have had all this shit sitting there for me to eat in the first place!

I guess my point is that I hope my sister doesn't get diabetes? Also, my mom reads this blog, so she can confirm that this is absolutely not an exaggeration. I actually wrote down the list of snacks because it was so ridiculous to me that I knew it would be a blog post on the very first night.

Anyway. There's lots of other stuff. I promise some pictures of me swimming with a dolphin and also another post about all the ways in which my dad fails at life (he watched my dog while I was away. Stop thinking "well, that was nice of him"- you haven't heard the story yet).

I'm Going to Whine About Being Tired. You're Welcome.

I'm sure I've mentioned my upcoming vacation. T-minus 6 days, motherfuckers.

The thing about this vacation is that my husband and child are staying home. This is the "say goodbye to my 20s" vacation where I spend the week getting hammered with my friends.

Do you want to hear something pathetic, though? The things I'm looking forward to the most are things like sleeping in and reading books and shitting and showering in solitude. Because I haven't shit or showered in solitude since Caitlyn started walking. I'm looking forward to shaving my legs too, because, if I'm being honest, I shave my legs maybe once every 3 weeks now. I just don't have time to do it more than that, and anyone who knows me realizes that is long enough for me to look like a bear. Summer is coming, you guys, and my legs are unprepared.

I feel so old. A few years ago I would have been seriously looking forward to spending a lot of time really, really drunk. And I am looking forward to that. But, honestly, I'm more looking forward to being able to read more than one page of a book per day.

The point I think I'm trying to make here, is that I am burnt the fuck out. BURNT. OUT. I can usually handle the trials of being a parent, but all the shit that has been recently heaped on top of that has me basically crawling through this week like I'm in a desert and vacation is an oasis. I'm completely and utterly exhausted. Run down.

House hunting is killing me. And it's not just the physical part- not just the running around after work and every weekend, looking at houses that are inevitably NOT the house. It's the mental part too. The part where I feel like we won't ever find a house. The part where I fall desperately in love with a place only to find out there is some bank related issue that will make it nearly impossible for us to buy it. The part where I want to give up and live in my shitty one bedroom apartment forever.

The other thing that's been getting to me is the amount of time and effort it has taken me to coordinate the delivery of the medication I'll be starting after vacation. I swear it's taken no less than a dozen phone calls to get this shit to my house. And it's kind of bullshit to put that much effort into something you are dreading.

Oh. And did I mention that Caitlyn's birthday is in less than a month and I've done literally nothing to prepare for it? Literally nothing. Awesome.

So I dunno. That's it. I guess this vacation could not have been timed more perfectly. Ideally, I'll get home showered, shaved, and well-rested, and my husband will tell me he found us the perfect house.

Airplanes+Babies=You are going to be fucking tired

Alright, so I didn't post while I was on vacation. I planned to and even tried to. But sometimes when you are in a third world country the computers just aren't what they are over here in America. I'm not what you would call tech savvy, but the internets said something about cookies being disabled and I had no idea how to able them. So that's that. But I will be posting all about the things and the stuff. Things and stuff. That is about the extent of my mental acuity right this moment. I'm absolutely exhausted, so we will start at the beginning, take a quick detour to the end and possibly make a brief pit-stop in 'traveller's diarrhea' junction. I'm talking about plane rides. And visits from the brown cow, apparently (actually this is inaccurate. I call it the brown cow because I'm lactose intolerant and he usually swings by if I decide to eat ice cream or something stupid like that. I think Sludgey the Speckled Llama is probably more appropriate). Yeah, you are just that lucky. I'm sorry, I'm disgusting. I'm just better at hiding it when I'm not overtired. So wait, yeah, planes. Airplanes. AEROPLANES. Flomp. Ok, I'm gonna try to be coherent now. I was nervous about the plane trip. I don't like to fly to begin with, but I was trying not to think about that. I spent all my time before we left focusing on what Caitlyn might need. The flight itself was 9 hours and for an international flight you need to give yourself a few hours of buffer anyway, plus we were trying to secure a bassinette and we were given the impression that we had a better shot at it if we checked in extra early. So for the trip to Peru, we were looking at a minimum of 15 hours from the time we left home till the time we arrived at Rodolfo's parents house. Now, let me tell you, 15 hours is a long time for a baby. What it isn't? A week. It would therefore make sense to assume that you wouldn't need a week's worth of clothes, formula/food and diapers (and bottles, wipes, pacifiers, spoons, bibs, toys, Tylenol, gas drops, thermometer, first aid kit, disinfecting wipes, hand santizer, etc., etc., etc.) in your carry-on luggage. Or at least that's what you would think. I overpacked. Grossly. Not in general, I wouldn't say (I did bring a lot more baby clothes than necessary, and our luggage was packed to the extreme, but a lot of those were Caitlyn's smaller baby clothes for Rodolfo's niece in Peru so they didn't come back home with us- in fact we were an entire suitcase lighter on the way home). But in the sense of what we actually needed to carry on the plane with us, I may have slightly overfigured. We had a backpack and a giant duffel bag full of carry-on items that seemed absolutely essential at the time. I mean really, what would I have done if Caitlyn felt feverish and I couldn't take her temperature to know exactly how high the fever was? Would I just give her a precautionary dose of Tylenol without being sure? How reckless that would be!!! And of course, you can't take a baby's temperature without a travel-sized jar of vaseline to grease up her booty! I can be a bit of a worrier and I'm always either completely unprepared or ridiculously overprepared. There is never a happy medium with me when it comes to things like that. So as I packed, I realized that most of this stuff would probably never be used. So it wasn't that I was carrying a bag full of stuff I didn't need that bothered me. It certainly bothered my husband, but that isn't really my problem. The problem came when we DID need something out of the bag. A pacifier, for example, right before the plane took off. The bag was so stuffed full of crap that we couldn't find a pacifier. Let me clarify that. We had a bottle at the ready. We kept Caitlyn awake until we got on the plane, and figured we would give her the bottle as we were taking off and she would doze off and nap for the first hour or two of the flight. You know, in a perfect world and all. She was fussy and exhausted while we prepped for take-off, so we figured we would give her a little of her bottle to calm her down. Except that she drank the whole thing in 5 minutes. So as everyone else is strapping themselves in for the flight, Rodolfo is annoying the flight attendants by opening up the overhead compartments and rummaging through our carry-on. It continued with that same theme for the entire flight. We would need something, and Rodolfo would mumble curses under his breath at me as he dropped things out of the bag while he searched for what we actually needed. I mean, diapers on the bottom has always been my motto; I don't know what HIS problem was. So all that being said, I can't really complain about the flight in. Caitlyn did very well and didn't cry at all, with the exception of when she decided to refuse her pacifier as we descended and her ears started to bother her. But at that point she had already spent the entire flight charming the pants off of everyone in her sightlines (she almost always has a smile on her face and had just started waving hello so it was really novel for her to wave at absolutely everyone who crossed her path and they all seemed more than happy to wave back) and one of the flight attendants felt for her and asked if she could carry her around and entertain her for a few minutes before we prepped to land. And of course, I said yes and Caitlyn was all smiles about being the center of attention after that. The flight home was a bit more challenging. On the way to Peru, we did end up getting a bassinette, which also meant upgraded seating to the bulkhead area, with more room for Caitlyn to move around. When she did nap, she was able to nap in the bassinette fairly comfortably. We weren't so lucky on the way home. Sludgey had made his appearance by then, and she had just started cutting the second of the two teeth she got during our trip (the two on either side of her front top teeth), and along with that, the soreness of a nose that had been running for a week because of the teething, so she was already naturally more fussy then on the trip there. This was an overnight flight, so I was really hoping to get a bassinette so she could rest comfortably, but also so WE could rest too. But the flight was packed and it just wasn't possible. Still, I figured, she usually does sleep through the night, this shouldn't be too bad. I had on my baby carrier and she always dozes off in there. That night though, she was cranky and overtired by the time we got on the plane, so she decided that the carrier was the worst thing that had ever happened to her. And she cried. A lot. Even after I took her out of the carrier, it seemed like I could do nothing right for her during that entire flight. When I cuddled her close to try to get her to fall asleep, she Hulked out on me and busted out of my grip with an angry scream. Daddy took her then, as Daddy can do no wrong. She only slept on Daddy that night. But even once she did fall asleep, she tends to be a little restless and wiggles around all night and the confines of Daddy's lap made her wake up and whine an annoyed little cry at least once an hour. And because of all the wiggling, we had to be on guard constantly because she nearly rolled off of Rodolfo's lap about a hundred times. At some point, and after that, for most of the rest of the night, she decided that the most comfortable position was on her stomach with her head and torso on Rodolfo's lap and her butt and legs hanging off my legs at a 90 degree angle. The problem with that was that she only needed to move an inch to fall off our laps. Rodolfo was on watch for the first few hours, and I probably slept for an hour of it, in 10 or 15 minute intervals. But I was so afraid she might fall that I couldn't manage anything besides a light nap, and every time she moved even a little, it would startle me awake, and I'd find myself lunging forward to grab a hold of her legs. Rodolfo's attempt at sleep went just about the same, and I think he slept maybe 15 minutes the whole time. Luckily, when Caitlyn woke up about an hour before we landed, she was in a pretty good mood. I wasn't sure what to expect after her crappy night's sleep. My dad picked us up from the airport and hung around to watch Caitlyn for a couple of hours while Rodolfo and I napped. That was yesterday. Unfortunately, Caitlyn's lack of a good night's sleep did catch up with her (also the time difference- only an hour but it was like doing daylight savings time all over again, and she tends to go to bed late anyway), and she spent half the day napping. Which meant that she didn't go to bed till almost 1am. I had to be up at 7 and I'm still trying to recover from my sleepless night on Saturday. So I am still very tired. A big reason I started writing this post right away was so I wouldn't doze off at my desk. Anyway, there you have it. Plane trips with babies can be pretty shitty. I will be posting more with all the fun stuff and pictures soon.

Just a few words before I go away

So I know I've sort of fallen off the face of the earth this last month, but rest assured, I am not dead. Just busy and whiny and prepping for our trip to Peru, for 10 days, starting on Wednesday.

A quick update:
Caitlyn has been on some sort of hungry strike, and forcefully pushes my hand away if I even try to get food near her mouth hole. She recently cut her two front, top teeth and I think there's another on the way. I'm really hoping the last one cuts through before our 9 hour flight in a couple of days. She has also learned that it makes a funny sound if she pats her hand over her mouth while yelling. Also, we have seen a few, very tentative steps in this past month. More on all those things another day though. I've got packing and shit to do.

I'm going to really really try to make a few posts while we are on vacation. During our last trip, I tried to write (not here though) about everything we did after we got back home and I never quite finished because there was just SO much. This trip is extra special because it will be Caitlyn's first to the home of her ancestors and to visit our extended family there, so I want to document it as we go so I don't leave anything out.

Lastly, Nadine and I are doing the 2011 AIDS walk in NYC on May 15. Please donate to this very worthy cause (and also, my fat ass will be walking 6 miles. That deserves some cash, people). Click here to link to my page and donate your asses off!