CHICAGO

Our trip to Chicago was GREAT. Flying with a walking, non-negotiable toddler was…PAINFUL.

Here is a recap of our journey...warning…lots of poop included. We departed Colorado on Wednesday afternoon. The first 2 hours and 10 minutes of the 2 hours and 30 minute flight was good. Tiring but good. As a parent you have to provide non-stop entertainment so planning for the airplane trip is key. Different snacks, drinks and toys are a necessity. Not just different toys, but NEW toys. Not just toys but straws, band aids, paper and highlighters, airplane magazines, etc. You have to switch (or more likely you’re forced to switch) toys every 3-5 minutes. If you find a toy that can extend that time frame, say up to 10 minutes you have done something beautiful. The toy that provided a longer interest was a travel magna doodle. Anyhow, the last 20 minutes of our flight was filled with mad, upset, disgusted, crying toddler. Anything we tried to give her (especially food and drinks to help with the descent) just made her more upset. A nice man offered gum for us to give her. Gum…for a 16 month old just doesn’t work well. It was a nice offer anyway. Finally she started drinking which helped immediately. Then we proceeded to get our bags which took forever. All Lily wanted to do was walk and of course, play on the dangerous, baggage thing. Finally we got onto our shuttle and Lily fell asleep during our 45 minute drive to the hotel. The hotel was very nice. Our room had a living room separated from the bedroom. The bedroom had a really nice comfortable looking bed but I couldn’t tell you if it was what I imagined. Lily got the bedroom; we slept on the pull out couch. Might seem silly to some but it was nice to have her sleep in the pack-n-play in the bedroom where we could shut the door and not disturb her. Plus she tends to wake up at night while traveling and will go back to sleep on her own…if she doesn’t see her parents who frequently share the same room.

My work conference was wonderful and very informative. The first day I could hear what I thought was Lily’s voice and looked behind me to see Randy whisking Lily away from an open door just before she ran into our conference room. They were exploring the hotel and came upon our room. It was cute and made me want to be with them. But overall, the work part of the Chicago trip was great.

Thursday night ended with dinner at our hotel. Mark, our friend that lives in Chicago, joined us. Lily didn’t want to sit still long enough to get through dinner. Randy and I ended up taking turns following her in the hotel. She loved to have the freedom to roam. Frequently she would wave and say hi to random people. A couple even commented that they saw her earlier with her dad roaming the same halls.

After my conference ended Friday we “moved in” with our friends, Zach, Jeanette and baby Jack. Jack isn’t much of a baby since he is actually about 4 weeks younger than Lily but much taller than she is. They did the normal toddler act of playing around each other but never really playing with each other. Occasionally they would make eye contact but it was rare. Lily loved playing with Jack’s toys, especially because he has a lot of sesame street toys (ELMO!) and a cool, but loud, car she would sit on but didn’t care to take it for a spin. Friday night ended with Randy trash talking during multiple games of Sequence with Z and Jeanette and Mark and his wife Jenn. We won more games but because we decided to play one more last game and winner took all, Mark and Jenn were the champions (but only until the next night…more to come later in my long post).

In case you’re wondering why I warned you about poop…well here it comes. Saturday morning resulted in 3 different diaper blow outs and 3 baths. For those that don’t know exactly what a diaper blow out means, well just imagine poop everywhere requiring an immediate change of all clothes (which always absorbed the runniness to some degree) and immediate bath because wipes do not take care of business. Besides the gastrointestinal issues Lily still acted okay. She wasn’t 100% but pretty good. After morning naps the gang all headed to the Chicago Children’s Museum. Jack and Lily loved walking all around and exploring all the cool contraptions, streams, slides, butterfly screens, etc. It helped wear them out which worked lovely for Jack who took his afternoon nap without a problem. Lily decided she would fight the sleep process and ended up with a second wind before crashing hard in the evening. We had to wake her up to eat dinner and put her back to bed not long after. Zach’s parents babysat while the 6 of us went to dinner at a great Mexican restaurant that also had international karaoke. Usually if Randy is around karaoke the chances are high you will hear him belt out some Axl Rose tune but he didn’t even take part. He was almost completely asleep during dinner but managed to get his old man act together in time to bowl. I had my career high game of 124 and was thrilled. I was even more thrilled when I threw the cards back on the table and re-challenged Mark for the Sequence championship from the night before. I ended up knocking down one more pin than him so now Randy and I are Sequence champions! With the time change we ended up going to bed around 3:30AM, only to wake up at 4:30AM to change another diaper blowout. We slept in the same room as Lily so after the diaper blowout putting her back to sleep was interesting. She was happy and wanted to play but when I turned out the lights and started walking her around the room she laid her head down on my shoulder. I put her in the pack-n-play next to the bed and draped my arm over the side. She loved knowing I was that close and it seemed to help her get back to sleep, eventually. For approximately 20 minutes she would stand up, feel my arm, kiss my face (I basically was sleeping on the edge of her pack-n-play) and lay back down for about 5 minutes before repeating this process a few more times. Even though I was extremely tired, it was very cute and I loved every minute of it. We changed another diaper blow out (how can one little thing empty so much???) later that morning before leaving for the airport.

The return flight. Oh boy. Randy and I were filled with upset stomach anticipation of what lie ahead. Lily was entertained by the airplane headphones and window for the first 15 minutes. She ate during take off but proceeded to get pretty upset. She played with some new toys but we could tell she wasn’t going to be content the whole flight. Finally Randy took her to the back of the plane and walked around with her. I was about 10 rows from them but I could hear her muffled cries so I went back to help out. I walked around with her for about 10 minutes until I felt a huge explosion in her diaper but the result…she stopped crying and fell asleep. The poor thing still had an upset tummy. Unfortunately, she had a messy diaper most of the flight but she slept until we landed. It was wonderful. The blanket helped contain the smell which we changed immediately after landing. We got our bags without a problem and got to our car (which took every last bit of energy from us).

Lily loved being back at home. She started rolling around on the couch and making silly faces. She would go from toy to toy smiling the whole time. Traveling is fun and being around our good, dear old friends is wonderful. Returning to the place we have made our home is great way to end our journey. Besides all the poop and issues with sleep we had a great time, thanks to our Chicago gang. They are a good bunch of people, very kind hearted, always make us feel welcome and we love them.