Travel

As Sam gets bigger, our transportation choices broaden. He's almost 11 months old now, and I finally feel comfortable pulling the two of them behind my bike in the secondhand double trailer I picked up from a neighbor in Platt Park. I jury rigged the Chariot sling in this trailer, to give him a bit more support, and he seems to like the ride. Being able to ride my bike places, with my kids, instead of driving, brings me an inordinate amount of joy.

 

We've generally just ridden places in the neighborhood so far, but plan to go a bit further soon. Our house is on the bike path that goes down to Clear Creek and downtown Golden. On the summer weekends, Clear Creek is a busy destination -- people tube down it and kayakers are everywhere. And there's a great playground right by the creek as well, with a park perfect for picnics. It's only about one mile from our house to downtown, but it's downhill all the way. And uphill all the way back. It will be a slog pulling about 60 pounds behind me...

 

This past weekend, I flew with the kids to Chicago Midway to get to my parents' house for a visit. Our flight out of DIA was delayed by about 3 hours, so we had a lot of time to kill at the airport. I was frustrated by the fact that the airline hadn't alerted us to the delay because we could have stayed at home instead of heading to the airport, but since I was setting the tone for Sylvie, I couldn't really mope and fume as much as I would've otherwise done. We hung out in a deserted corner of the airport with many stanchions lying about, and I ended up setting them up to be islands for Sylvie to jump between. Sam was interested in grabbing Sylvie's legs as she jumped around (which did not make Sylvie happy) so we pretended that Sam was a shark from whom Sylvie had to escape, while also giving him little pats of encouragement. Sam loved having some attention, and Sylvie was giggly about the game too. It occupied us for a whole 15 minutes, and I felt like a parenting god during that period.

The flight left around 6:45pm, so I got the kids into their pajamas before the flight. I was struck as I watched Sylvie on the plane, intently reading the emergency information packet in her pink polka-dotted jammies, how she's growing up, and also still a baby.