Safe and Sound

1 mommy + 1 two-year-old + snow and ice + 6 hours cooped up in a small seat + 2 airplane rides = (luckily) a safe and sound trip to Ohio!

Keith had left last Monday to fly to Ohio for work, so Maddie and I were house-bound for the beginning of the week (he'd taken the car) and our "big outings" consisted of walking down the block to Walgreens, just to get out of the house! We were both getting pretty stir crazy, but hey--at least now my house is REALLY clean! :-) Maddie and I took a cab to the airport Thursday morning, in the midst of heavy snow, and it took waves of feeling like I was going to throw up to realize just how anxious I was about the weather and flying alone with a toddler! I'm the queen of "what-ifs" and getting myself worked up way ahead of time...what if our cab gets in an accident? what if we don't make our connecting flight? what if our plane gets grounded in Chicago and we have to sleep in the airport? what if Maddie is a pill the whole way? I'm sure that God just looks down on me and shakes his head! :-) Thank you for those who prayed--Maddie was an angel the whole trip! As she says, "You happy girl!" (happy girl = happy momma!) She was awesome on the plane--we read books, colored, used Playdoh, sang songs, played with the airplane phone, listened to music, practiced putting the seatbelt on/off a billion times. Fine by me! We were an hour late leaving Portland, so when we landed in Chicago we raced off the plane, ran straight to our next gate and they were already boarding! Cutting it a bit close for my liking! It was so cute...when we landed in Columbus, Maddie ran the whole length of the terminal out of excitement (only a brief pause when she saw the Starbucks sign to ask, "Mommy coffee? You cookie?") and ran all the way to Daddy's arms! Such a sweet sight. :-)

We've had a nice time here so far, just hanging out. Maddie's cousins are here too (Dominic, 2 weeks older than Maddie, and Sophia who is 11 weeks old), so there's a constant source of entertainment and chatter. Last night we crammed 14 relatives in for dinner & all the fun craziness that a full house brings. Rumor has it that Santa Claus himself might be visiting the house on Christmas Eve this year! What excitement that will bring! (Well, you never know with 2-year-olds...it'll either be excitement or horror!)

We are all still adjusting to the 3-hour time difference here. Last night Maddie finally cried herself to sleep after midnight and then woke up at 8am! Oh joy! She'd been all excited to try sleeping in a big girl bed for the first time, but that idea was shot down hard the first night. Picture my idea of a mother and daughter snuggling side by side, falling asleep in each other's arms. Then picture the Tasmanian Devil in your bed. Yep, we'll go with image #2. Gee, which part of this is not condusive to sleeping...the squealing? kicking the wall repeatedly? straddling momma's head? pretending you're a steamroller all over momma? getting elbow-ed in the face? Yeah, after about an hour, it was all the peace and harmony I could take. So my dear husband *stormed* out of the house, drove to the store (after midnight, mind you!) and bought a playpen. Ahhh, sweet relief.

One last quick memory. Maddie's favorite movie lately is Annie. One of the little girls in it always says, "Oh my goodness! Oh my goodness!" So on Thursday morning when Maddie woke up to snow falling outside, she busted out in her little voice, "Oh my gracious!" HA!! Apparently this cute phrase is reserved only for snow, but she's said it quite a few times since then. She's such an adorable girl! :-)