Psychotomy

I so love thanksgiving.

First I drive 12-16 hours, depending on traffic, to get to my inlaws (we stopped for the night this year, so it was two 6-hour chunks, not near as bad)

The first few days were OK, just us and her parents.  Just the usual screaming and yelling amongst them.

Tuesday night I got to take a 5 hour journey with dad and my eldest to pick up a table from the other house.  Not because we needed it, but because having the person that wanted it take the extra drive would have been rude.  We got home from that and boy was wide awake after a two hour nap and two hours of BOREDOM in the car.  shocking.

Wednesday I had all the kids asleep and in bed by 8pm and they mostly slept through.

Then Thursday everyone else came, as they are wont to do.  Loud, obnoxious.  They spent most of the day at the second sleeping house, because they didn’t want to be around the kids.  Sis commented on how rude it was that they were doing that.  Until she was preggers last year, she did the same thing to stay away from my kids.

When they all came over, in size 75 steel boots like a brigade storming normandy, they were loud and annoying.  One of them came over and rubbed baby’s head on my back and said “what are you up to baby?”

My response?  ”Sleeping until you guys got here all loud and shit.”

After dinner, sis’ baby went to sleep at 7 (“he sleeps from 7 to 7 without ever waking up or anything!”) and they all sat at the top of the stairs (admittedly where the tables were) and played cards .  LOUDLY.  I swear, these people could each help a three ring circus without a mic.  Because they were all trying to last night.

Since there was no way I was getting my kids to sleep with the racket, I let the elder pair watch cartoons until she wanted to sleep.  Got her down for ~20 minutes until there was another ROAR from upstairs, and she woke up.  So when the boy was ready, I changed him to his jammies and sent him upstairs to tell everyone to “BE QUIEEEEETTTTTT!!!!”

Twenty minutes later I asked dad to go tell them again.

They finally settled ~5 minutes before I was ready to open the bedroom door and shout up “Shut the fuck up!” Which would have been hilarious to me, since it would have woken up sis’ perfectd sleeper.

Who apparently woke up screaming when she tried to go to bed, so she left her husband to deal with it since he walked in in front of her.  She closed the door on him :o

I hate family time.

Today the boys all went to play golf (with a disgusted “no way” from dad when I asked if he was taking boy; I know it’s a real game on the full course, but he’s been wanting to take boy all week), the girls all went to see twilight at the theatre.

My baby girl is sick, so mommy is laying with her, and baby boy is sleeping on my back.  I’m unclear why people were telling me what time the Muppet movie was playing.  Sis already left Mom in charge of her baby when she left, I’m fairly sure if I tried to go now, too, mom will kill me :o

Posted in: general, trips by attriel /
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First day of the trip was travel. As in we left our place ~7:30 in the morning to go to my parents, shuttle to the airport, plane to jfk, flight to india, arriving ~4 the following afternoon. Short trip ;)

Flight from DCA to JFK was a small puddle-jumper commuter flight. TINY overheads, so we had to check the spare suitcase at the gate because it wouldn’t fit as carry-on. No problem, still had my duffle and kiir’s backpack, and it was only 45 minutes in the air.

Checking in for the Air India flight there was some confusion because they wanted to label EVERY bag as carry-on or checked. The car-seat is, technically, neither. That lady finally just threw up her hands, labelled it as carry on, and said we’d have to deal with it later. Which worked since it was now labelled the check-in counter had no issues with it.

But when we went to get on the flight, we four got separated by the process, so I’ve got DK and the carseat with my duffle sitting in the carseat. as we approach the causeway, they have people gate-checking items, since the plane is 100% booked they need the space. Kiir ended up checking the suitcase again, after we grabbed a few things out. In the meantime, however, I have some Air India guy telling me I have to check the bag.

It’s his carseat.
You have to check it.
But it’s his SEAT.
No, you have to check it, it’s too big.
But it isn’t a carry-on bag! FAA regulations say that an infant/toddler can have their carseat in their plane seat for protection.
No.

By now he’s getting pissed with me for not doing what he said, I’m losing my temper which I know isn’t going to help, so I yelled for kiir. Guy throws up his hands and I go to kiir to talk to the guy she was talking to, since he seemed more competent anyway. Kiir starts with him …

It’s his carseat
We have carseats
On the plane?
Yes, you have to check it

Well, hell, if the first guy had TOLD ME that they HAD carseats, THAT’s in the FAA docs as a possibility and that the airline can deny our carseat in that instance. Fine, great, happy now we handed it over to check and boarded.

When we asked the stewardess, she gave us a blank look. Danger, Will Robinson! After some more discussion, during which my dad joined us, it was established that (a) “carseat”, in india, is a basket. Basically a bassinet for laying the baby down. Uh. Not what we had. This is why we were trying to SHOW people what was in the case! Oh, and (b) we’re not in a seat that can have that carseat, even if it WAS acceptable to us.

I rushed back to try to get the carseat from the checking area, but the guard at the door of the plane told me that it was not permitted that I leave the plane after boarding it. Even though I still had my boarding pass (and my passport for ID). I wasn’t sure which way she was leaning with the stilted explanation. Either I wouldn’t be allowed to re-board, or I’d be arrested. I decided that neither was conducive to this exercise and tromped back to our seats

My dad then spent twenty minutes working his way up the chain of importance, with me tagging along uselessly but feeling like I should be there since it’s my son and my carseat :o In the end we had to get approval from the CAPTAIN to use it, after ASSURING multiple copilots and such that it was SECURE. Actually, the only reason we got that far was because my dad raised a stink about the fact that he paid for a FULL seat, FULL PRICE, not a discounted infant seat or anything, and if he’d wanted to hold the baby on our laps the entire flight he wouldn’t have bought a WHOLE SEAT for him.

Eventually they sent someone down to the tarmac to grab it for us since it hadn’t gone into the plane yet, and we got to set it up. Oi.

Apparently if anyone had asked me I could have also reassured them that the seat secures down using the airline’s seat belt. That made them feel even better when we showed them :o

We established that on the return flight we needed to make sure to mention that it was a full seat at full price, and that we probably shouldn’t call it a “car seat” but a “child safety restraint system” or something similiar. Which was in the FAA brochure, but I hadn’t really read it figuring that Kiir was there and had these answers, and it’s not like it was going to be that much of a shock to them to see a carseat. Americans have to use them semi-often, right?

Or, you know, NOT. AFAICT we were the only people to ever think of using a carseat on an Air India flight :o

OTOH, on the flight back two weeks later, we never heard a peep about it. I swear, that is a LOT of high-intensity training :o

Posted in: DK, India by attriel /
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In India, we were having to wash clothes by hand. Either Kiir or I would take a few items into our “bath” with us and wash them, hanging them up when we finished. The soap was sometimes hard to clear from the clothes, and since the water is from a reservoir my uncle filled every morning when city water pressure was enough to be able to pump it, we tried not to use too much.

So some things didn’t get quite 100% clean. We threw everything from the trip through the laundry when we got home. And DK isn’t the cleanliest of chaps, even at home with carpets and hardwood flooring and cleanly rural life. On hard stone flooring, open doors, and smoggy dusty dirty cities? His clothes got horrible. So they needed a couple cycles through the laundry :o

But some clothes? Needed it more. For instance, here’s his shirt from the flight home. Delhi to NYC, 15 hours, and not a damned thing to do on the flight. So he watched iPod with his Tigger & Pooh episodes, and he ate lollipops. Lots of lollipops.

The flight home was not kind

That’s how the shirt looked when we got to JFK, so once we had time to sit down with our bags etc and take him off my back (he was in the carrier for wandering through baggage and check in and security and such), we popped off hte shirt and gave him a fresh one.

Without the Flash, it's worse

When I didn’t use the flash, the color is flawed, but the effect is a little more pronounced. That entire neckline and parts of the sleeves? They’re actually ENCASED in sugar from all those lollipops.

But that was from the flight, and was generally expected. I mean, 15 hours on a plane? Lollipops? Of course he’s gonna get messy. The one that kindof threw us was this one:

The original 'Great White Shirt'

This shirt was from the first week. We visited a couple relatives on the way to another where we were gonna spend a night or two. There wasn’t a lot of running around in fields or climbing through ruins or anything. It was just general daily usage!

When we left in the morning, we were talking about his Great White Shark shirt. By the time we peeled it off him in the evening we had re-dubbed it the Great White Shirt. As the trip progressed, the term generalized to reference any previously white shirt. Because none of them made it back to “white” while we were there. But the Great White Shirt we never even bothered trying to clean while we were there. Because we figured the amount of work it needed required someone who did the hand-washing regularly and knew how to get dirt and stains out. We didn’t really.

But once we got home, we threw all his clothes in the laundry with some detergent and some Oxy and let them soak overnight. Then ran them in the morning. Then ran them again because all the white shirts were still stain-y.

Germs without germs

The germ shirt came out OK at that point, but a couple others were a little worse off still. But I pulled them out and sprayed them with oxy pre-treater and set them aside while I threw the rest of DK’s clothes into the dryer. Then I spent the day washing diapers (another story)

After spraying occasionally through the day I finally tossed the last of the great white shirts, including The Great White Shirt in during the last cycle of pre-wash and left them in for diapernight. This morning I checked them after drying, and LO AND BEHOLD!

The Great White Shirt Is White

And OMG. thats a LOT of washing! :o

Posted in: DK, India by attriel /
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So, when we went out on errands wednesday, DK fell asleep in the car on the way to costco at like 3. And slept until nearly 5, THEN we went for errands, and kept waking him back up. Because he didn’t really get up at 5, we just decided it was time for him to be done with nap. He went to bed around 8 still. Tired.

Last night, kiir took him up for nap around 3. He got up and played in his room and she went to sleep … oops. So I watched him for the afternoon, and made us dinner. He was NOT happy about having to wait while the macaroni & cheese was made (come on, I have to boil water and then boil the pasta kid, seriously, it’s only like 10 minutes or something!!!) He ate the first half bowl that I set for him, so I got the rest of his serving now that it’d've cooled off. As I was eating my dinner I looked over and he was asleep in his chair. He’d turned his head, like he was watching K, and then layed it down on the top and went to sleep.

Because I’m the good guy, and mommy was still asleep, there are no pictures. I took him up and put him in the bed. Then I endeavored to stay up until 9 or 10 (ended up 11, actually, because I was playing Civ Revolution).

Ungrateful lout woke up when I came to bed because I had the AUDACITY to move his leg a little so I could fit on the bed. Then the little bugger got up at 3am.

And, no, I don’t mean he woke up because he was wet and then went back to sleep. He was wet (and poopsy, so I can’t really blame him for waking up), but he was also DONE. In fact, he hasn’t gone back to sleep YET. I wish I’d've gotten more than about 4 hours of sleep last night (got a partial 5th around 5 when he called for ‘mom’ and i dropped him off on kiir … bad attriel, I know, but dammit! TIRED!)

Posted in: DK, India by attriel /
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We got back yesterday, today we’ve been recouping. DK had an issue at lunch, but we think it was too much milk too fast after getting back. He had something like 20oz this morning. After virtually no dairy in two weeks, that might have been a little much :/

I’m going to post day-by-day mostly, although I will compress those days that didn’t have much to report on probably.

Posted in: India by attriel /
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So we got home today. Landed at JFK ~5:30 this morning, more than 20-hours after leaving my aunt’s place in India for the airport. Hit up the Delta counter to see if we couldn’t change our 9pm flight to something, say, before lunch … :o

They put us on the 8:30, and all was good. Indira Gandhi airport from 9:30 til boarding ~11:45, local. Then ~15 hours in flight, landing at 5:30 US. Another two hours in JFK after everything waiting again. An hour in flight. Half an hour at Reagan National. About an hour in the shuttle van. Stopped at my parents for a bit, then the drive home. Finally got in our door ~1 I believe. DK’s taken a couple hour-and-a-half naps, kiir went to bed about 3 I think. I just took DK up for bed-time since he was falling asleep on my leg again I figured I was now fighting a losing battle and might as well put him in a bed.

Trying to stay up for another hour or two before I crash. See if I can’t go down during ‘night’ normal.

Posted in: India by attriel /
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So, Saturday evening before we leave Monday morning, my parents called me to let me know that apparently our international return flight had moved.

“I’ve got good news and bad news.”

“What’s the bad news?”

“You’ve got a 15 hour layover in JFK on the way home.”

“WTF? What the heck is the GOOD news???”

“They changed your flight from a two hour in london to the non-stop. So you get to leave at a more reasonable time.”

See, the old flight left at like 8am, so we had to leave the house for the airport in India ~4 or something stupid. The new flight is midnight? So we can leave ~8pm. Then of course, it’s a fifteen hour flight opposing a 10-hr time change. So , we’ll be landing ~6am. Then we just have to figure out HTF we get home from JFK, because we don’t really love the notion of hanging out at the airport for 15 hours for our evening flight :o

Posted in: India by attriel /
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So, one of my “hallmarks” is a tendency to worry and fret about things I really can’t control. For instance, I gave myself a mild ulcer (or ulceration or something) when I was 15 because I was worried about some test scores. I passed (more than), but for the couple of weeks between taking the tests and getting the results, I was actually going through pepto alarmingly fast for a teenager :/

Why bring this up? Well, the story had no point. But the concepts? That’s because I’ve already started worrying myself sick about the India trip. The flight (oh gods the flight), the relatives, what we’re going to do. Where we’re going to go.

I’ve been less than half a dozen times in my entire life. Some of that is from before I was old enough to remember, the last trip was after we were married. I remember some. Some of what I remember isn’t there anymore. I’d love to show him the ancestral home (for no reason but to show it to him since it really isn’t that exciting) but NO ONE lives there anymore. We may take a day trip out there to see it from the street, but I think the property was sold, too, which means there may not even BE a house :o That’s one of my two big memory places. The other is the sister we stay with every time, but even that house has changed a lot.

I worry about how he’s going to be, with all these “strange” people around! He gets shy in large groups, and with big Indian families … It’s almost all “large groups” … and when it isn’t? Well, then we have small houses and 3 people besides us and my folks makes it crowded :o

And on top of it, I’m worrying about whether I’m going to get sick AGAIN. I seem to get nauseaus or diarrhetic EVERY trip … so I’m currently making myself sick by worrying about whether I’m going to get sick … I hate my mind somedays.

Posted in: India by attriel /
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So

In a few weeks we’re going to India to visit family. My family, specifically. And DK, in particular. Because if we (somehow) left DK with someone here, we’re not sure my dads siblings would let us in their front doors. “attriel? Who? never heard of you!”

I’ve been 4 times in my life. Once when I was a little older than DK will be. Once when I was 8 and again at 12? and then after kiir and I got married, we went to “show off the new bride” to the famly. My dad made a point of the fact that that trip was the last one he was obligated to obligate us to. Now it’s my family, and it’s up to me to go.

Then he decided he wanted to take DK :o Which is fine, because tickets to India are like 1500 or 2000 apiece, with the various sundries associated. And with 3 seats, thats a lot of scratch. while I love my dad’s family, there are honestly better things I could do with 6k. But my dad is paying, so we’re only having to come up with the money for the various bits we need for the trip (diapers for DK, some fixed wardrobes, etc), things we’ll need to pay for associated with the trip (over two weeks in kennel for K, at 30$ a night, plus another 10-20$ or so if we want him to get any exercise), and then money we need IN India (souveniers, money for my “sisters” (I’m supposed to protect them, but because I’m not there, I’m sortof giving them money to hire protection. but there’s no actual protection involved anymore ; so really I’m giving them money because I can’t symbolically protect them any longer … yeah, I’m not sure I understand it either), etc). That’s all adding up :o

We decied we needed new diapers for DK because we just werent’ quite sure about starting with stained diapers there. We don’t really have any issues with them, but we’re not sure about the reaction we’d get from family. OTOH, my parents have suggested that we could just use disposables over there, since they sell them in the shops it’s not like we’d have to pack two weeks worth of diaps. But we just can’t really see our way clear to using disposables in the third world country where trash it tossed in the street to be collected later. Especially since we don’t use them at home. Sure, if we were using them daily already, we wouldn’t switch for the trip and we’d accept that it’s not that unusual there (I imagine a lot of the middle class and up use disposables, since that kind of thing is generally a trapping of “wealth”, in a way, because you can afford to THROW IT AWAY). But starting with cloth, and using disposables JUST for the trip just feels wrong :o

We’re still not sure what all we’re going to do where, but it’s probably going to involve lots of running around visiting family! My dad had seven siblings. Even if we just visit each of their houses for an afternoon, that’s one week spent on that. We’ll probably spend a night or two here and there, so it won’t be constant travelling. Quite.

And won’t it be fun to see how DK reacts to the environment and all those people around? Four seems to be about his limit for people he’s not familiar with, six with mommy and daddy. With my parents there, that only leaves two strangers. And that? That is NEVER going to be happening during this trip. Which means that this could get VERY exhausting. Very fast.

Posted in: DK, hindi, trips by attriel /
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Left for vacation last friday. Left the house at 10:30, arrived in NC at 11:30. AM and PM respectively …

To be fair, however, we left at 10:30, went to gymboree, picked up a few things at target, did lunch, hit the grocery for my happy pills so they wouldn’t run out thursday evening. Got “on the road” around 1:30. Stopped at kiir’s grandmother ~4:30? her aunt was there visiting on HER way to vacation too! then another aunt stopped by with her two kids, 5 and 8?, and we ended up just staying for dinner rather than leaving and then stopping in 20 miles :o Boy likes to eat at 6. 6:30 at the outside, if you give him a snack to keep the starvation at bay. Left there around 7:30 again, so I was really only driving 7 hours. But since I got up at 8:30, it was a long damned day :o

Kiir’s parents arrived saturday, we hit the pool. Went to New Bern, the Birthplace of Pepsi Cola!, but the town was basically closed when we went on Sunday. Monday was more pool and playing at the timeshare b/c mom had to work most of the day. Tuesday we (kiir, dk, me, and dad) went to the beach (mom had to work all day (this is a repeating theme)). DK LOOOVED the sand and the surf and the ocean and everything. Unless you took away his plastic shovel. Then the universe sucked and was trying to eat his favourite toy and and and ooh shovel! yay. :) (I had to run into the water a few times when he dropped it whilst playing in the tide, oi)

Tuesday night mom and dad watched DK so Kiir and I could go out for dinner , just the two of us. I was afraid all the good restaurants were an hour away at the beach area, but Kiir had found a few in New Bern that sounded decent. We actually went to a japanese steakhouse, was pretty good.Wednesday we did the pool again, mom played with DK for a bit between calls. Thursday they left and we went to the pool and started packing things up

Friday, checkout was at 10AM. I had called and gotten permission to leave at noon instead, since we didn’t really think the 15mo old was going to be conducive to packign quickly, nor amenable to getting up early enough to be out and on the road at 10 :o Kiir took him to the pool around 10ish, and I spent until 11:30-11:45 packing the car. They finally came back to see why I hadn’t come over to pick them up after finishing. On the road around noon, yay. Stopped in like 20 minutes for lunch at IHOP, picked up blueberries for the boy wonder, and off we went!

Stopped at Kiir’s grandmothers again and had dinner with them. Dinner was nice, but the important part of this stop was giving desmond some time OUT of his carseat to run around. Because he woke up when I stopped for gas an hour outside of Richmond. And he was PISSED. Because he was DONE with his car seat :o

Got home last night ~10ish, yay.

Posted in: general, trips by attriel /
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