Island Travel Interviews- Australia, Take 1 (Sydney)

Surfing Bondi Beach

Read the full post on MackinawRoad.com

Which Island Will You Be Talking About and Why Did You Choose This Island? Australia. Which, according to the Internet, may or may not be an island, given it has “continent” status, but either way, it’s surrounded by water and we visited it in our Spring, their Fall, of 2017. My brother married a Brissy girl (aka an Australian from Brisbane) and they planned their wedding halfway around the world.  I had so many apprehensions about leaving my two little ones behind, but I’m so happy my brother and sister-in-law “forced” us to take that 16+ hour flight to the land down under.

We spent an action-packed 48 hours in Sydney.

Traveler Tips For Leaving the Kids at Home & Actually Enjoying Your Trip

Travel Tips for Leaving the Kids and Enjoying Your Trip

My husband and I have taken a handful of trips away from our kids since we became parents, but none so far as when we jet-setted off to Sydney, Australia for my younger brother’s wedding. In truth, the anxiety about being so far away from my babies overshadowed the excitement of actually traveling to an incredible new country I never dreamed I’d visit. As much as we all need a break from parenting once in a while, halfway around the world is about as far away as you can get from your children. So what did I learn to help mitigate my anxiety and maximize our fun?

Mantra for the New Mom of Two

Mantra for the New Mom of Two - Don't Wish it Away

A coworker once told me it takes six months to get the hang of a new job. I don’t know whether she based that time frame on any scientific studies, but it sounded about right to me. As I prepared for the birth of my second child, I anticipated some transition time as I took on my new role as a mother of two.

My first day began as I happily went into labor a few days before my scheduled c-section. Compared to my water-breaking-five-weeks-early emergency birth of my first child, the birth of Baby Number Two was blissfully normal. She came into the world screaming and healthy. I kept waiting for the emotional wave of postpartum to wash over me like it had with my first, but when week one passed without incident, I was optimistic.

Then came week two of my new gig. Screaming turned out to be the norm. As I settled into sleep deprivation, I sent a bleary-eyed text to a friend who’d had a baby two months prior. I asked her to remind me how long it would be before things got easier. When she texted back “Yeah that first month is tough,” I thought “Month?! How am I going to survive the week?”

Kindling the Curiosity of an “Interesting” Kid

Kindling the Curiosity of the Interesting Kid

Cheerios, jellied cranberries and vanilla ice cream: the three food groups my little brother ate growing up. He was the third of four kids and I’m sure my mom just thought, well at least he’s eating something. This same brother of mine just got married and, as my parents described to the guests at his wedding, he was the “most interesting” of their four children.

I think “interesting” encapsulated both the worry and the reward of raising a kid who saw and chose to experience the world differently. In addition to his very particular palette, he did flying leaps from the couch onto our baby brother, blamed every bad thing he did on a ghost, and carried the Guinness Book of World Records everywhere he went. In third grade, a police officer did a career day presentation to his class and at the conclusion, the officer asked if there were any questions. My brother’s hand shot up and he asked, “Can you spell the longest word in the English language?”

He followed his interests from sports to space camp to a summer job working at a senior center, soaking up stories from the retirees. After college, he moved overseas to live in the middle of the desert on an oil rig, with time off spent traveling the world.

I recently asked him what he remembers from childhood that helped kindle his own curiosity. I was looking for lessons I could apply to my own parenting and here are a few nuggets I’m going to try, too.

Discovering the Natural in an “Unnatural Birth”

Discovering the Natural in the Unnatural Birth

I’ve never been good with blood—or pain for that matter. I’ve fainted while ripping off a Band-Aid, getting a flu shot, and reading the vampire birth scene from the third Twilight book. I was even wary of reading ahead in What to Expect When You’re Expecting during my first pregnancy because I didn’t want to pass out in public or change my mind about this whole giving birth thing.

So while I knew a “natural” birth experience wasn’t for me, I didn’t know my water would break five weeks early, drenching the passenger seat in our car as my husband and I drove home from our first parenting class.

A quick U-turn back to the hospital and it wasn’t long before I was being wheeled through an eerily empty corridor towards a green-lit OR. It was near midnight and I literally watched one of the doctors about to cut me open yawn as I passed. Thankfully, another doctor held my hands maternally as the anesthesiologist stuck a needle in my spine. She assured me the baby would be fine before she disappeared to the other side of the blue curtain.

Read the rest of the story at Her View From Home

Part of the Time, Life’s Mighty Good

Great Grandma

The day my grandmother died, I missed the phone call to tell her goodbye. I’ve often wondered how I would have handled the weight of that moment. Surely many “I love you”s would have been blubbered through tears, but would I have told her what I’d known for as long as I could remember? That if I was lucky enough to have a daughter someday, I would name the baby after her? I’ll never know.

But let’s not talk about that, she would say. This is not a sad story. A year later, I did have a baby girl. And I did name her after my beloved grandma, Corinne.

My pregnancy had been pleasant and uneventful until my water broke five weeks early, dousing the front seat of our car as my husband and I headed home from our first parenting class. Two hours later my baby was out and I enjoyed regaling the tale of our late-night surprise to my family, friends, and even clients via calls, texts, and emails. It was 3 a.m. and I think I was still high on adrenaline and whatever drugs they gave me for the C-section. Initially, doctors said to expect a week-long hospital stay for our preemie. I had only seen her for a second before she was whisked off to the NICU while I stayed on the table to be sewn up.

Eight hours later, with my husband’s coaxing, I finally stood up in slow motion and shuffled my way toward the NICU wing. I stepped into the room and froze. She was tiny. She was hooked up to tubes. She opened her mouth to cry, but no sound came out, a ventilator stuck down her throat. She would spend nearly three weeks gaining strength in the hospital, while I found myself in a dark fog. Even after she came home, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had missed out on so many “firsts” of motherhood.

Then, something miraculous happened. My dad emailed me a direct line to the past. My uncle had come across a typed essay my grandma, my new baby’s namesake, had submitted to Reader’s Digest sometime in the mid-1960s. It was never published—he also found the rejection letter—but today she may have been a bonafide mommy blogger.

Will Your Family History Survive the Digital Dark Age?

Tips to Help Your Family History Survive the Digital Dark Age

In college, I worked as an archives assistant in the basement of the university library for $5.55 and hour. It was one of my favorite jobs ever. At the time, we were scanning and uploading the collection so it could be accessed online. The work was essentially data entry, but I loved feeling connected to the people who’d passed through my campus before me.

This love of history runs a level deeper when it comes to my own family. I’m the self-appointed family archivist and cherish tangible artifacts from generations past. From the engraved necklace of a great great aunt who shared my name to the handwritten valentine from my grandpa to my grandma. I peruse thousands of family photos and sometimes gather some for a timely Facebook post.

Now that I have kids of my own, I feel constantly torn between living in the moment and capturing the moment in my own little family history. Maybe that’s just part of parenting today, but if you’re the family archivist (and there’s one in every family), see if any of this also sounds familiar:

New Traditions Born After Spending Baby’s First Christmas in the Hospital

New Traditions Born After Spending Baby's 1st Christmas in the Hospital

I’ve always had to travel for the holidays. My parents were wonderful about keeping Christmas morning focused on our immediate family, waking up at home with Santa gifts under the tree. But then after breakfast, we’d be packed up and on the road for at least an hour’s drive to visit relatives.

When my first baby was born, my husband and I decided we weren’t going to travel for the holidays. She was a preemie, we were recovering NICU parents, and she was only a few months old. Plus, my husband had always been a closeted Clark Griswold, and wanted to make Christmas magical for his firstborn.

Then the miraculous happened. My entire extended family was coming to me in Chicago on Christmas! In truth it wasn’t just me drawing them there, some cousins lived in the city too, but now 30-some of my relatives were going to be gathered in our city to celebrate a real “big old-fashioned family Christmas!”

My husband and I planned a casual Christmas eve dinner with friends since my family would be arriving Christmas day. I couldn’t wait to introduce our new bundle of joy to the expansive extended family she’d been blessed with, plus my three younger brothers, one even flying in from his job overseas. I imagined everyone swooning over her and pictured us bundling up and strolling downtown to take in the twinkling magic of Michigan Avenue at night.

But the day before Christmas she got sick. New parent worry kicked in and we took her to the doctor that day, assuming we were probably overreacting. A quick check-up later and we were told to go straight to the ER and, alarmingly, not to even stop at home.

Our little preemie had RSV. No visitors. No unwrapping gifts under the tree. No “big old-fashioned family Christmas”.

A Perfect Attendance Trophy Still Counts

A Perfect Attendance Trophy Still Counts - Parent.com

When my parents downsized their house, my mom seemed overjoyed that she could finally unload the boxes of memorabilia she’d amassed throughout my childhood. My husband received a similar delivery from his mom when we got married. Both were unsentimental send-offs of stuff to the rightful owners.

We moved these unopened boxes from apartment to apartment to finally our first home. They sat stored in the basement for months until one night we decided to dig in and purge. In his, we found a stack of juicy notes from two high school girlfriends, a truck collection, and loads of football and hockey paraphernalia. In mine we found art projects, scrapbooks, my troll collection, and, at the very bottom, a lone trophy. As I carefully unwrapped the newspaper surrounding that golden girl set atop a metallic blue pillar, it brought me back to the summer of 1992.

The air was frigid, even though it was mid-July. The gray sky loomed ominously as I snapped a swim cap over my head and shoved my ponytail into the tight rubber rim. I looked around. Only two other swimmers had shown up, so I had a lane to myself. I stretched my goggles over my eyes, dipped under the water, and propelled myself off the wall into my warm-up. I was 11 years old and I had my eyes on a big goal.

When an Old Scar Reveals a New Truth About Motherhood

When an Old Scar Reveals a New Truth About Motherhood

Most births have a “plan” and mine was fairly simple: Give me the drugs and we’ll go from there.

What I never expected was my husband and I driving home from our first birthing class, imagining what lay ahead of us, and having my water suddenly break all over the passenger seat. I remember looking at him with an unspoken “holy sh*t,” neither of us grasping the parenting lesson we’d just been slapped with – we were not in charge anymore. We u-turned back to the hospital and a whirlwind two hours later I was lying in the OR – arms outstretched and a spinal numbing my lower half – while my first baby was cut out of me five weeks too early.

Fast-forward nearly five years and it’s the Friday before that same baby is off to kindergarten. A trip to her favorite park and school shoe shopping is on the docket for later, but right now I’m finishing up what the mom blogs would call my “self-care” (aka a morning yoga class). As I lay down in the savasana “resting” pose, I feel a little tug in my lower abdomen. It’s the familiar, yet still unnatural, pull of whatever is stitched together under my skin at my C-section scar adjusting as I stretch out my legs and lay my arms at my side, hands open. My eyes close as I sink into post-workout, mellow bliss. I can hear muffled giggles from the childcare room through the adjacent wall and recognize the sweet sound of my daughter’s among them.

Then, not one, but multiple tears start streaming down my cheeks. OMG! I’m supposed to be doing my self-care and stuff, not crying! Oh no, here come more. I do a quick mental calculation. Nope. My period is weeks away. What is bringing this on?