alexist

Neil and I have decided to go to DC for a few days in the middle of our trip to the States. Since we've already rented a car for 2 weeks, we're driving down. This could be interesting ;-) We'll be sharing the driving (Neil trusts me in the States). Letting him loose on the New Jersey Turnpike, though... ;-) I've informed him that, sadly, we will be missing the Vince Lombardi rest area (we'll be entering the turnpike too far south).

Interesting note: if you plug my parents' ZIP code into Google Maps directions, it tells you to go via the Bronx (BAD BAD route). If you put in their exact address, it sends you via Staten Island. Now, my assumption is that their start point for 11747 is further north and directs the algorithm to use the Northern Parkway to get off LI, even though that route ultimately sends you in a roundabout way and through worse traffic. BUT, because the mileage is almost identical, it doesn't realise that. What's exceptionally interesting is that I looked at their start point and it's pretty close to my parents'. (We discovered this because I double checked, using their exact address, and Neil meanwhile had just plugged in the ZIP and mentioned the Throgs Neck Bridge as part of the route. We tested it and sure enough, that's the quirk.)

(Comparison route: My way, which I'd already thought was right:
Southern State -> Belt Pkwy -> Verrazano-Narrows Br -> Staten Island Expwy -> West Shore Expwy -> Outerbridge Crossing -> Rte 440 -> NJ Turnpike.
Other route: Northern State Pkwy -> Grand Central Pkwy -> Clearview Expwy -> Throgs Neck Br -> Cross Bronx Expwy -> George Washington Br -> New Jersey Tpke. If you've ever driven in NYC you know that the Cross Bronx / GWB / Turnpike is a bad route anytime and is a particularly bad way to go to DC!)

Must see if I can borrow my sister's EZ-Pass. (I'll pay her back for the tolls, I just want to be able to skip the massive queues in the cash lanes.) (EZ-Pass - automated toll collection. Think DART Tag, if you've seen that, only this works in the entire Northeast which has lots of toll roads and bridges! Current MTA B&T toll is $4.50 one way cash, $4 E-Z Pass, double toll collected westbound only on the Verrazano. NJ Turnpike is paid per mile travelled. Apparently, it will cost us $3.10 cash. Oh, 2nd plus to SI route: Less money paid on turnpike tolls. :-) )

And now that I've given you an incomprehensible lesson in road geekery...

She's been crying her head off for 45 minutes now. She's changed and she slept the whole way home. She should be hungry--her last bottle was 13:30--and indeed this sounds like a hungry cry, but trying to give her a bottle makes her shriek more, and when I did get her calmed down and tried again the tantrum restarted. Cuddles don't help, she doesn't want a pacifier, she doesn't have any trapped gas (I got her to burp)... what does she want??

I've never been tempted to do cry-it-out before, but damn am I close now!

Today, as usual, I got a 326 near my house. As I've mentioned before some of the single decker buses have narrow aisles that don't accommodate buggies with large wheels. This was one of them. After trying to jam my buggy up the aisle someone said "why don't you just get off and get back on at the back?" Duh, of course. So I got off and tapped at the rear doors. They didn't open and I saw the driver shaking his head. I went back to the front and he said "no access for buggies at the back". I asked why not, drivers have done it before and he said "rear access for wheelchairs only, it's the rules". Eventually I managed to jam my buggy down the aisle, wasting more time than if he'd let me on at the back.

This makes me angry for two reasons:
1) Parents with small children rely on buses. It's no skin off the driver's back to let us on at the rear if necessary and we waste LESS time than trying to push them down crowded aisles.

2) There was a similar incident mentioned in the Standard last week and TfL said there is no such rule.

I WILL be complaining this time. deerfold, is there a best way to contact London Buses? I.e. do they pay more attention to people who bother to write a proper letter? :-)

This was going to be a happy post, until I just discovered a problem. I went into town today and ended up at Foyles (WHSmiths Euston was out of this week's New Yorker, which was the main point of the expedition). I got several books. Now, the Bugaboo has one design flaw: with the carrycot on, it's difficult to access the underseat bag. The easiest way to put bags of shopping in is, in fact, to take the carrycot off (it clips on and off easily), put the bags in, and replace the carrycot. However, with flat objects such as books, they can just be slid in. So I figured that I'd forego the carrier bag and the fuss, and just slip them in. Which I did.

I THOUGHT I slid them all in properly. But when I just went to get the books out of the bag, the New Yorker AND the copy of Goodnight Moon I got Aliza were both missing :-( I think they're the only things not there. The annoyance is multifold:

1) I went all the way into town, dealt with the pram on the tube (discovered that unladen, it's not so hard to carry up and down stairs, but with the bag full, it's quite heavy. AND I forgot how many steps there were going into TCR :/ Luckily someone nice helped me) and the main purpose of the trip was lost.
2) I've wasted about £10.
3) Even if I were crazy enough to go into town tomorrow, there's an excellent chance that they'd have already cleared the 7th May issue off the shelves. Camden News also carries foreign papers, but exit & entry to Camden Town is closed today and tomorrow, so I'd have to go all the way into central London.

Oh, totally unrelated and good/bad: Ocado man (groceries) showed up 3h early as he was also delivering next door. This actually suited me, because I'd only booked the 10-11pm slot because it was the only one available before tomorrow night (I wanted the groceries delivered before I went out tomorrow). However, the reason they hadn't called me was that I forgot to update my contact details on the site. They tried to call me, but because I've both moved AND lost my old mobile, no dice!

And I forgot to order more drinks :/ Or more likely, didn't hit "add to cart" correctly and didn't review my order properly before submitting. I also forgot lemons, but I realised that after I'd ordered and it was too late to fix it (it was past 22:30).

Well, she doesn't have Goodnight Moon now, but I did get her The Very Hungry Caterpillar :-) Board edition. I thought I remembered a bigger board version, but I didn't see one. I decided that the board edition was better than the hardcover/paper edition, even though it's quite a bit smaller, because she'll be able to handle a board book. I got her a couple of other board books, and Eric Carle's animal flash cards (the letters won't mean anything for a couple of years yet but the pictures are really cute). I just showed her one of the books and she was really interested in the pictures. Good girl!

The Very Hungry Caterpillar is, of course, a very important book! :-) I have strong opinions on children's books. But then, I'm a lifelong bookworm who taught herself to read aged 2...

Maybe I should be glad I won't be setting myself up for 3 readings of Goodnight Moon every night before bed?

I got her these:
http://www.amazon.com/Eric-Carle-Animal-Flash-Cards/dp/0811852563/ref=pd_bbs_sr_8/103-6649045-8952664?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1178662911&sr=8-8

Just looked through the whole box and they're really excellent! It's an A-Z of animals. (for the curious, x is for xolo--in brackets it says it's Xolointzcuitli, the Mexican hairless dog.)

Yeah, I like kids' stuff... guess that's a good thing now eh? ;) I didn't much like the Baby Einstein books though--they were a little too pushy-parent for me, if that makes sense. I think that the fun aspect of the book or toy has to come first, and the education part should follow from that. I'm wary of pushy-parent syndrome. Sometimes it seems like parents just rush to put their kids in the rat race at birth, and that doesn't sit well with me. It's a difficult balance, though--you want your kids to have opportunities and to learn about things that are important to you. So, for example, I think kids should learn foreign languages. Starting at 11-12, like anglophones normally do, is much too late. But I'd still resist putting my 3 year old into French classes. I was thinknig about that when I read this article in the New York Times (and had a look at the place's website--http://www.orlystreehouse.com). On the one hand, great, place for mommies and kids to have fun. On the other hand, does childhood need to be so structured? I didn't have all that when I was little. I played soccer for a while, had some dance lessons (dropped them because I'm a klutz--Carly kept them up for a long time, though), went to day camp to keep me out of my mother's hair, had 2 years of piano lessons (again dropped due to incompetence, I never could coordinate left and right hands, and I hated practising. Kept viola up till I graduated high school, though.) That was it.

I also wonder how much the kids get out of it, especially the babies. I hear mothers of other kids Aliza's age talking about doing XYZ, and I don't, and I don't know if she's missing out or not. Swimming, OK, she might actually enjoy that (I'm annoyed because all of the parent & baby/toddler sessions in Barnet are on weekdays--Neil would have liked to go). But things like stories or rhymes--is it any different to me reading to her myself? If it really benefited her, I could make myself go, but if it is just about getting the mommies out of the house and having an excuse to socialise... nah. I'm not that antisocial but it is still difficult for me to go into a whole group of strangers. I know that once she gets a bit older I will have to, because then I'll be doing it for her sake and I can endure it for that, but not otherwise. I do the NCT gatherings because I already know them, even though I do tend to feel a bit peripheral (I suspect that this isn't helped by not having passed my driving test yet! I'm restarting lessons though, so hopefully should pass it soon) but it is good for both of us. I see other mothers, she gets exposed to germs ;-) (She hasn't been sick yet! I'm starting to wonder if she isn't getting exposed or I'm just exceptionally lucky.)