Travel Baby Steps

 Me: 2019 was rough. Quite possibly the most challenging year of my life.

2020: That's cute.

2021: Hold my beer. 

2022: What do you say we kick off this year with a stomach bug during a 3 day power outage? Nothing like puking your guts up by the light of a headlamp to start off the year on the right foot. 

So...yea. I know I'm not alone in saying the past few years have taken a lot out of me. In many ways it feels like I'm in a tumultuous surf and every time I come up for air I get knocked down by another wave. For awhile I just couldn't seem to get any footing or momentum. The way I describe it is, I never have a *surplus*, of time, of energy, of patience. Like I am just constantly in survival mode day-to-day and there is no calm space to plan for the future, including travel. 

Covid was a convenient excuse as well to just put it on the backburner and never leave the house.  Juliet's poop withholding also made leaving the sanctuary of our home an undesirable prospect. When my parents planned a mountain getaway in Tenessee for their 40th anniversary over New Years, Jonathan and I both felt a ton of trepidation. When we saw Covid cases and flight prices skyrocketing, those trepidations went up right along with them. But I hadn't seen my siblings or nephews in a year and I didn't want to miss out on seeing them and celebrating with my parents. So against our intuition, we boarded a flight from SFO to Nashville. 

One of our specific reservations was the fact that Juliet was now 2 and therefore required to wear a mask on the 4.5 hour flight. I'll let y'all guess how much a young 2 Juliet liked wearing masks and what her response was to 'you have to wear it.' 

Um...yea. 

So I had anxiety about this, especially as we had heard horror stories of families getting kicked off flights for toddler non compliance (I'm sorry y'all- maybe I'm on the wrong side of history for saying this but masking toddlers still seems insane to me.) . Luckily, Juliet was highly motivated to go on the plane and since I let her know that she couldn't get on the plane without her mask, she happily wore it until I could start doling out snacks. 

Our flight crew were super laid back about it and told me it's really just the boarding and deplaning where they have to enforce it but for very young kids they understand how hard it can be. Thank you! I was so relieved that this was their attitude! Juliet did better on the fight than I expected, so that part when smoothly. 

When we touched down in Nashville we had a 3 hour drive to the mountains. I wasn't able to get in touch with any of my family all day and finally got text from my brother when we were 15 minutes away saying that my mom was sick and quarantining in her room. Um...sick? During a Covid surge? In a house with 16 people? My alarm bells were going off full force! We'd been traveling all day so we proceeded with the plan to stay at the house that night. My mom ended up having a nasty stomach bug and not Covid. So...good news? 

Also, the house was a great setup for the big kids. However, Juliet is kind of a maniac in the best of circumstances. In our house we have certain 'yes spaces' where we can contain her and relax a bit but this was not the case in a 3 story house so the first day was a lot of me just chasing her up and down the stairs and keeping her away from my Mom's room. I don't think I sat down once! 

Our first day was mainly just recovering from travel and grocery shopping. My sister's fam took Forest on a little hike with them and Juliet had fun exploring outside the cabin with her 'best friend' aka 'that little boy' aka her closest-in-age cousin, Elijah. 

The next morning one of my poor nephews got hit with the stomach bug and my sister's family rightfully said- peace out! They drove home to Florida before anyone else ended up sick. We were bummed to not get more time with them. We decided to take our little family into the Smoky Mountain National Park and do a little waterfall hike. This was certainly the highlight of the trip! 

Forest had a blast rock climbing along the way and Juliet was very impressed by the powerful waterfall. Tennessee sure is beautiful! 

The next morning I woke up to a quiet house and a world blanketed in snow. 

It was a sweet and peaceful moment until I realized we had no power and therefore, no coffee. 

We had a fun morning of playing in the snow with the kids and pups, but when we didn't regain power going into nighttime the charm started to wear off! Jonathan and my uncle Jay ran into town to stock up on flashlights (and headlamps!) which was a godsend. 

Here the days start to blur together but I'm pretty sure that night I started to feel unwell. I was sleeping in the room with Juliet (since we didn't have a monitor in the no power situation) when I felt the stomach bug hit full force.  My sweet brother heard me puking in the middle of the night and brought me gatorade and dramamine. I moved to an open bedroom with a bathroom next to it (did I mention we were all sharing bathrooms? I felt awful to be spreading my germs but had no control over it). I spent a few hours puking with a headlamp on until the sun came up. When people realized I was sick they basically all packed up and ran for the hills. 

We still didn't have power (or heat..or water) and I was literally too sick to get out of bed. We still had 3 days until our flight out but everyone else could drive home. Jonathan took Juliet to a hotel but my parents and Forest stayed with me one more night while I recovered. 

After a good hard sleep that night I felt ok enough to pack up our things and head to Nashville. We'd spend the night there before heading out bright and early the next morning. I still wasn't feeling great so even though Jon picked out a great restaurant for dinner I just ate crackers and nursed a sprite. I was so ready to be home! 

The next morning it was blizzarding in Nashville and we were anxious our flight would be cancelled. 

We were actually impressed with how equipped the airport was to de-ice the planes and since our plane was already there and our flight crew didn't have covid- we took off pretty much on time. And got home *just* in time as Forest got hit that night with the stomach bug followed quickly by Jonathan the following night. Juliet threw up once the same night I got sick but she seemed fine otherwise (so I'm told- Jonathan mercifully kept her away from me while I was sick). 

So yea, guys, Tennessee may have given us the stomach bug, but it did not exactly give us the travel bug! Jon's parents were supposed to come visit right on the heels of that trip and we just had to make the tough call to cancel. We needed time to just rest and recuperate. They rescheduled for Forest's Spring break and we were looking forward to doing some staycation activities with them, especially since Juliet was doing so much better with her pooping issues. Unfortunately Jon's mom ended up tearing her meniscus right before their trip so we had to postpone again. 

So it was 2 weeks before spring break and we had zero plans. After reading Forest's journal entry from the previous year's spring break we knew we had to make it somewhat exciting. 

Hmmm..what could possibly top the excitement of a baby's butt rash? 

We decided to still do some staycation plans but also visit the nearby Great Wolf Lodge for 2 nights. 

taking the long way around

This trip went muuuuch better than Tennessee. Still, we were off to a rocky start when our google maps told us that what we thought would be a 50 minute drive was actually a 2 hour drive. Apparently they closed down the interstate! Luckily we started our navigation route as we were leaving the house and were able to reroute through the country. The drive still took forever but at least it was scenic. 

It worked out since our room wasn't ready by check-in time anyway. Great Wolf Lodge over Spring Break can get kind of busy! We still managed to grab a quick dinner at the resort and the hit the water park before bedtime. It was easier to play man on man coverage due to our kids' very large age gap so I was on Juliet duty while Jon did some of the more adventurous rides with Forest. 

They had great little toddler area with 4 slides that honestly kept Juliet entertained for an hour at a time. For her, that is saying something. She normally has the attention span of a fruit fly. She was bubbling over with joy the whole time! 

Her second favorite thing was the wave pool. The wave pool was Forest's favorite water park feature as well. 

He also enjoyed the wolf tail which Forest says "it drops you into the water slide like a trap door in Minecraft." (He literally just typed that. So grown up.) But Forest's most favorite resort feature wasn't the water park at all. There is an interactive game the kids can play with a magic wand called MagiQuest. It's like a scavenger hunt interspersed with challenges on various tucked away screens. 

In addition to the water park Juliet really enjoyed the character meets and making her very first Build-a-Bear (well, technically Build-a-Wolf). We were shocked that out of all the glittery outfits, bathing suits, and accessories, she ended up choosing jeans and a white t-shirt for her wolf. Very out of character for her! 

The trip was not without it's hiccups. We'd heard reviews that since the resort opened during Covid, it has been constantly understaffed which leads to issues like slow service, late check ins, and no clean towels at the water park. We experienced all of that but since we were expecting it, I didn't find it that obnoxious. We went over Spring break as well so I expect it was more crowded than usual. I wish we'd known to just bring our own beach towels, because it wouldn't have been a huge deal to do so. 

We found the food to be good quality and surprisingly affordable- but maybe that's because of where we live. We were able to feed our family of 4 for $30 which we definitely cannot do in Danville! 

There was a mini fridge in our room so we were able to keep snacks and sandwich fixings on hand. We got a 2 bedroom suite with a big living room where we set up the pack n play. It was very comfortable and quiet. 

slumberpod is still the MVP of traveling with a toddler

I think we will definitely go back to Great Wolf Lodge. Juliet actually begs to go back every single day! 

It makes me kind of miss Texas where there were little water parks at all the community pools/YMCA/gyms. She would really love that! 

At the end of the month we have plans to spend a week in Maui! We are waiting to see how that trip goes before planning anything else, but I'm hopeful that with Juliet's increasing maturity and her progress in poop training, along with lower Covid restrictions/protocols that we will maybe start getting our travel legs back. Forest and I just got hit with *another* stomach bug so hopefully that means we will be immune at least through our Hawaii trip? Please Dear God! 

Juliet 2.5/2.75 year snapshot

Whew! I am not good at keeping up with the blog these days. I think I have just deferred to Instagram stories to keep family in the loop, but I personally like to keep a more detailed record here to look back upon for my own personal nostalgia. Juliet turned 2.5 three months ago and has hit lots of milestones/developmental leaps in the first few quarters of being 2 year old. Here is a brief rundown of what's she's up to these days.

Stats: 39 inches inches (97%) and 32 lbs (86%). Her growth is slowing a bit and she's definitely slimming down everywhere but her cheeks. She's right between 3T/4T for clothes and size 9 for shoes. 

Teeth: She's got them all! 

Schedule: Generally the same as when she turned 2. We have occasional nap strikes which are currently an issue. I am bracing myself that she will drop them completely before she turns 3, which stinks because she is a superb napper! It is like feast or famine with her. It's a 2.5 hour nap or nothing. But also, she's having some trouble falling asleep at night if her nap is too long. 

6:30/7 wake

1-3/3:30 nap

8 bedtime

Jonathan has also started to work in the office on a hybrid schedule so some days I'm forced to wake her at 2:40 to pick Forest up from school. On those days we do a 7:30 bedtime. 

Extracurriculars: Juliet goes to preschool MWF mornings and it's her most favorite thing! We've been intermittently doing Little Explorers hiking class and she goes with me to bible study on Tuesdays. She recently started swim lessons once a week which she loves. 

She continues to be our social butterfly extrovert and is not a homebody like her mom and brother. It's exhausting but she will tear the house to pieces and get into so much mischief if we try to just chill at home. I'm so glad she has preschool to meet some of her over-the-top social needs! We've actually registered her for 2 different preschools next year since she's old enough to start of F's school. She loves the school she goes to now and they have longer hours and are much more relaxed about masks/potty training so we plan to keep her there MWF and do T/TH at our church preschool if it works out that way. At the moment, she's doing great with potty training and masks aren't currently required, but we are hesitant to put all our eggs in the church preschool basket in case things change.

Eating: Eating has leveled out so much. She used to eat like she was ravenous or else be on a hunger strike. Now that all of her teeth are in and she's not having such frequent growth spurts, she tends to eat ok on most days. Her appetite can still fluctuate but not in such an extreme way and we try to just trust that she's eating her fill. She's gotten much better at trying new foods and at least eating a little bit of everything on her plate. She's a typical toddler in that a food she loves one day will be absolutely disgusting the next day. 

We also carefully manage her diet to make it poop friendly. We limit foods that can be constipating or binding (bananas, apple sauce, cheese, etc) and have intentionally added in more fats and fiber (avocado, chia/hemp/flax, nuts, leafy greens, coconut). She was already on a healthy diet but we do have to be more cognizant these days. Like she loves applesauce so we have to make sure her applesauce is balanced by adding chia seeds and maybe some prune puree. She loves banana milkshakes so we add in coconut milk, peanut butter, avocados and a chia/hemp/flax powder to round it out. One day I (hopefully) won't have to think of foods in terms of their poop friendliness but today is not that day! 

Favorite Book: This definitely changes on a daily basis and we are frequent library visitors so she's constantly reading new things. I will say that she's slowly turning into a book worm. She loves to read through her books and sometimes will even let me read to her for 20 minutes or so before she hands me a book and says 'ok you read that one and I will go read to myself'. Some of her most often requested titles are Duck & Goose series and the Little Blue Truck series. She also loves her poop themed books! 

Favorite toy: Juliet is also finally getting into toys! If I had to pick a favorite I'd say her dolls and their accessories (stroller, highchair, cradle, etc), but she also loves duplos, trains, puzzles, and anything arts related. I think a big difference between her and Forest at this age was that he had very focused interests (trains) whereas Juliet wants to play with alllllllll the things. She appears to have a shorter attention span versus his hyper focused play, but she has a wider range of interests as well. She also wants to play with someone so her independent play skills need some developing! 

Language: Juliet seems to have a good grasp on language. Speaking in full sentences, conversational, etc. She has a few articulation issues but nothing atypical for her age. Forest had very crisp enunciation so sometimes I worry about her in comparison but I think he was just typical first born. She's just as verbal as he was, just a little less precise with enunciation at this point. Her preschool says her speech is really great for her age so I'm trusting they know what they are talking about! Her doctor said the same thing when I asked about it at her 2.5 year well check. 

New skills: Pee potty trained for a few months and does this completely independently.  In the past few weeks she has really turned a corner with pooping on the potty too so I am close to saying she is *potty trained* vs potty training, but we don't talk about fight club. She's so good on her balance bike and very athletic in general. 

She's got amazing dexterity and hand strength. She opens her own juice boxes and snack bags. She dresses herself everyday. She's just very independent and takes initiative on everything, so she seems very grown up in many ways. 

Favorite show: Cocomelon is still up there but we also rotate through Frozen (and all the Frozen spin offs), Moana, and Encanto. She just loves music so definitely drawn to that aspect of those shows. We are personally pushing Daniel Tiger pretty hard. Ha!

Other observations: Juliet is very friendly and outgoing. She's confident. She still has exuberant energy but it's leveling out as she gets older. She's not nearly as wild as Forest was at this age. She goes through short silly bursts but it's not insatiable energy. We've been actually trying to build up her stamina for hiking but 1 mile is about her limit! Then she just lays down prone on the trail and asks to go in the carrier for snacks.

J's hair in southern humidity. Ha! We can never leave California ;)

 She's still really destructive and a huge mess maker. She will snap crayons in half, pull everything out of every drawer, break her play jewelry, write on tables, etc. I just have to keep a close eye on her because her entertaining herself quietly generally ends in her bodily harm or destruction of property. But hey, at least she's starting to entertain herself so I will choose my battles! The other day she spent an entire hour putting balls in our fountain and then getting them back out. She was soaking wet with freezing water and likely killed all of the plants surrounding the fountain in the process, but the hour of peace was worth it! 

She's a stinker, but adorably sweet. She loves her brother so much. Yesterday she chose a poop prize after pooping on the potty. She got a 2 pack of starburst and saved the second one for Forest for when he got home from school. She's always thinking of other people and wanting to share her toys or treats with them. Very sweet. And of course, she still has the very best hair on the planet.

That's it for today but I really really hope to start writing more soon. 

Potty Training Juliet and an education in Stool Withholding

 Forest was not an easy baby/toddler/preschooler but he took it easy on us in several major ways: sleep training, learning to read, potty training, etc. I've come to learn that he was a potty training unicorn- pretty much picked it up right away and never looked back. 

But that's not the whole story. The whole story is that he picked it right away *the second time* we tried to train him. The first time, he was 22 months old and after 4 days we threw in the towel. It was a total mess, and even though he was having plenty of successes, he was also having plenty of accidents and we just were not ready for a long uphill process. 

Fast forward to training him at 2.5 and I was like 'pee and poo go in the potty' and he was like 'cool- got it.' So when Juliet came around I planned to potty train her as she approached 2.5 as well. Then at 21 months she started *asking* to potty, and actually going. 

At that point in time we still hadn't gotten our shipment, were in the middle of a bunch of house projects and visitors and getting our stuff from Thailand and it was just not the time to be going all in on the potty training thing. So we did the total opposite of what our preferred method 'oh Crap Potty Training' (OCPT) suggested and just did a casual thing where we put a potty seat in her room and let her go when she wanted but put her in diapers otherwise. 

She started asking to go more and more frequently and was keeping her diaper mostly dry. About a month after turning 2 her preschool teacher told me she thought we should potty train her or at least put her in pull ups, since she was asking to go and going at school. 

Juliet asking to use the potty at library before we started training. Public potties have never been an issue.

We decided to give it a go over Labor Day weekend (Juliet was 2 years and 1 month old at the start). We only had 3 full days at home before she'd be going to the church nursery and preschool which was very different than when we trained with Forest and I had a full week cleared to tackle it. 

Our plan was to start naked, move to commando and then try for little outings to build up to being left in the nursery for 2.5 hours the following Tuesday. The short story is she initially did great! We were able to start doing short outings by that Sunday morning. Since she was already peeing on the potty frequently we knew it would just be a matter of doing that 100% of the time. The first two weeks she was seriously peeing every 20-40 minutes. So not having accidents but holy moly, I couldn't do a 30 minute school drop off run without having to pull over to let her pee. So that was the first hiccup. 

In the early potty training days, she'd sometimes go and pee in the empty potty seat while I was still cleaning out the bowl from the last time. 

The second hiccup was poop. Another major reason we decided to go ahead and potty train is that Juliet was displaying some withholding behavior that was leading to some constipation issues. She was almost exclusively pooping at school and having massive blowout type situations there. At home, she seemed distressed to poop in her diaper so was often sneaking off, taking her diaper off, and pooping on the bathroom floor next to the toilet. We hoped it wouldn't be too big of an adjustment to get her to move that BM to on top of the toilet rather than next to it and also hoped that going in the potty might ease her withholding habit and make her more regular. But we were wrong. 

We didn't get a single poop in our 3 days at home.  So we decided to break code with OCPT again and put her in a pull up for church/school until we had some poop success. We asked the staff to treat her like she's potty trained and take her regularly and listen when she says she needs to go. She's done great with that but does still poop in her pull up every single school day at preschool, 5 months later. They've told me she tries to poop on the potty several times but very little, if anything, comes out and then she ends up pooping in her pull up while on the playground. Once she's pooped they put her in undies for the rest of the day and she hasn't really had any accidents in that department.

She was clearly trying, but this is all that would come out. 

 

About 3 weeks into potty training she just walked over to the potty and pooped, NBD. We thought that was a turning point but then it took her another 5 days to poop at home again and then the next time was another 2 weeks after that. She was just withholding as much as she could until she got to school and during the weekends she was totally miserable. 

We tried to be really proactive with the withholding, mainly because we wanted to just get the potty training thing under our belts. We hired an 'Oh Crap' Potty Training Consultant worked with her on following the Oh Crap method for tackling more extreme poop issues- which is essentially forcing them to get over their withholding by giving suppositories everyday for a week. Looking back, it sounds absolutely crazy that we followed this advice, but we did. And it took our withholding problem from bad to horrendous in 3 days flat (at which point we stopped the suppositories and fired the consultant who told us that putting her in a pull up to poop was the worst thing we could do. Worse that giving her a suppository and forcing her to sit on a potty while she screams??? I don't think so). 

Forest's turn to play 'poop doula'

We went from trying to get poops in the potty to just trying to get her to poop period. Anytime she felt the urge she would absolutely panic, cling to my legs, cry, etc, but it would take 2 days of that hysteria until she was finally able to release it.  We have stopped the suppositories at the advice of our doctor and are just giving her a pretty high dose of miralax at this point. There is lots of fear mongering about miralax out there, but we've done our research and trust our doctor. It's the most gentle stool softener on the market and for the first time in months of trial and error we are actually seeing progress. She's pooped 3 times at home in the past 10 days, which hasn't happened since potty training. She's actually pooped 4 days in a row so we are really on a streak! 

It's not ideal, but at this point, we just need to her to poop so I'm trying not to stress about where she poops.  She clearly has the control to hold it, recognizes the sensation that she needs to go and is able to release it when she's comfortable (in the sandbox at school, apparently), so now we are just trying to slowly shift that release to a more socially acceptable place like the potty!

Most of her poops at home are in the potty and the last 2 have been her just randomly taking herself to the potty and announcing afterward that she pooped. So much different than the past few months where she'd verbalize the need to poop for days and then become increasingly frantic as the ability to hold it in became harder. 

So after 5 months, I would still call Juliet 'potty training' vs 'potty trained', which is frustrating but I've learned to let that go. She really has done great with pee and that is something we never even worry about. She takes herself and basically never has accidents. 

You can't make your kid eat, poop, or sleep and Juliet likes to remind us of these facts on the daily. I sometimes think she was sent to this world for the sole purpose of humbling me and she is surely doing a thorough job of it!