Christmas is Awesome!

So last year, the Bug was sort of indifferent to Christmas. She got that we went somewhere other than our house, she got it, sort of, that she got some new stuff and that people paid a lot of attention to her, but mostly she just got a bit over-stimulated.

This year, she doesn't really get the whole thing... I mean the whole Baby Jesus and Santa and Practising Commercialism with Reckless Abandon thing, but what she does get is OMG!!!!!! TOYS!!!!! (Also, the Caillou Christmas Movie... if I have to watch it one more time... but that's an entry for a different day, as is the goody bag she brought home from her Mother's Day Out from Baby Jesus' birthday party.)

She got her first gift of the Holiday Season today (that is, except for the Baby Jesus goody bag), and she wanted to play with that doll RIGHT NOW so I opened the packaging. The doll and accompanying pacifier, bed, blanket and pillow were secured in the packaging (shown postmortem) using no fewer than 4 different types of fasteners, at least one of which required a blade to get it undone, and all but one of which is a choking hazard.

Since I'm packing for our Christmas travels (pray for us... 500-ish miles in the car with a toddler), I'm making lists, and I have included the following Important Tool on my list:

My Mom's old Swiss Army Knife. Seriously. How else will I get through the presents? 

(It might be interesting to mention that none of the toys we got her have this sort of packaging on them. Further proof that I'm a damn dirty hippie.)

Mom Knowledge

As the owner of an unreliable brain, as I like to call it, I write things down all the time so I don't forget them. If I don't, I forget far too much, and the results can be comic or they can be semi-disastrous. On top of that, I have the added burden, it turns out, of being a Motherless Mother, which, according to Hope Edelmann, makes me even more likely to take 1,000 steps just in case something happens to me. (Although I actually didn't loose my mom until I was 27 years old, so I should probably try to let these fears go at least until the Bug is potty trained.)

So. In a few days, the Bug will be staying with her grandparents without me. I'll be in a whole different country. I'm a little freaked out by this. I know she'll have a great time and I will have a super productive time at the conference, and my dad and step-mom are going to have a super time with the Bug, but I'm still a little freaked out. I'm going to be in a WHOLE DIFFERENT COUNTRY.

In addition to making sure I have everything I need to take the Bug on a plane without DH, I've created a document called "stuff to know about the Bug" that I'm going to print out and give to my folks. They will almost certainly tell me I'm being silly, and maybe they'll have a point. It is chock-full of practical details like how to get in touch with her pediatrician,  her dosages of a couple different fever reducers, and her bedtime routine, all tidily in one place.

But there is this whole other set of knowledge I'm not sure I can write down or that I'll even remember. It is one thing to say that she takes 1.2 mL of infant tylenol, but what about her preference for emptying laundry baskets, or carrying her stuffed monkey around her neck? What about how she most of the time likes to sleep with her head touching something silky or something soft? What about all of the spots where she is ticklish or the fact that she'll mostly be still to have her nails trimmed during Dirt Girl World, but not during Thomas the Tank Engine? This is the short version of the list. In fact, I'm willing to bet that I don't know the whole list myself.

I guess all of this is what I'll call Mom Knowledge. The 1,000 little things that I know as her mom that no one else knows. I've been the one most intimately with her on a day-to-day basis, and so I know her quirks, I know her likes, I know her dislikes. These are things that other people just don't know, and I'm not even aware of them, I just respond to them, deal with them, live with them. These aren't the sort of things that I learn in an e-mail from BabyCenter. It's just stuff I know, stuff I do, stuff I've stored in muscle memory, where cognition can't mess with it.

I'll bet she'll be more fine than I will. She's younger, and far more adaptable than me.

A New Adventure

So, in addition to teaching, dealing with random campus lockdowns, a baby who had a hella cold last week, and everything else, let's add one new adventure to parenthood. Travel with the Bug in tow on work matters.

Since the Bug is still nursing, it seems imprudent to travel for longer than a work day without her with me. So, if I go, she goes. Also, since the DH works long, occasionally unpredictable hours, it seems like I am the natural and ordinary baby supervisor.

So of course, last year, when I was relatively unencumbered, no matter how many abstracts I submitted to conferences, I couldn't get anything programmed. I probably wouldn't have been able to get a letter to the editor published in a local paper. This year, I am, for conferences I have heard back from, 3 for 3. I am actually programmed on 3 separate conferences, one of which will require international travel.

And I have to attend these with the Bug in tow. One of them, I have already persuaded the DH to come along and Bug wrangle. The other is being held about 45 minutes from my parent's house. While this will involve a plane flight, it is essentially a scam on my part to get my employer to pay me to take her for a visit with her grandparents.

I'm trying to convince my parents that they want to take a vacation to the international conference. We could all go together. They could spend 4 straight days playing with their granddaughter. I might tear my hair out (there is, after all, a reason I asked to go to boarding school at the age of 15), but they'll all have a splendid time.

But how do I balance my party-girl conference self (in so much as academics are, in fact, party girls) with my mom-self?

Also, how to take the pack 'n' play on a plane then a train and get us and my sanity there in one piece? Is it possible to do such a thing with a 15-month-old and remain sane?

I'm not really sure, but what I am sure of is that some hilarious posts will ensue.