We just returned last night from our trip to Galiano Island, which was just as great as Sadie's book promised her it would be, but with a little more adventure thrown in.
Sadie was an angel on the flight there and a demon on the way back, but you could hardly blame her. We took the 9:30am ferry into Vancouver from the island and then had several hours to kill before going to the airport, so we went to the aquarium. She loved it. What did she love best, you ask? The otter? The anemones? The 20-armed starfish? No, she fell in love in the children's play area, with a cheesy display in which bubbles float up endlessly through colored lights. She practically spazzed when we finally dragged her away so we could catch our flight.
My perpetual fear is always of being That Family, the one with the screaming child on the plane who won't shut up. Back when I was childfree I would glare and mutter under my breath and swear that that would never my MY kid. Unfortunately, karma came back around in a big way last night -- Sadie wanted nothing to do with the airplane. She couldn't get comfortable, and then once Scott had finally rocked her to sleep in his arms (after screaming fit #1), the guy in front of him put his seat back and hit her in the head, waking her up and prompting screaming fit #2. 30 minutes later, she finally stopped crying when someone behind us gave in to her attempts to play peek-a-boo. Perhaps realizing that the entire plane might revolt if he didn't bite the bullet, he played peek-a-boo with her for like FORTY FIVE MINUTES, enough time to get us into our final descent into LAX. That is a lot of peek-a-boo. Wherever you are, peek-a-boo man, I love you.
The vacation itself was a blast. I'd been anxious about how Sadie would react to a house full of noisy kids and even noisier adults, but I quickly got my answer: she LOVED it, every minute. She behaved like a dream and got along with all the other kids and then, just to make us look extra hateable, she went to bed every night at 6:30 and took 2 hour naps every day as well. She even put aside her picky eating habits and chowed down on everything we offered her -- I'm sure it helped that she was playing with toys every minute she was awake and worked up a huge appetite.
Outdoors activity was curtailed because of the weather -- sunny but really, surprisingly cold, like in the 30s and 40s during the day and colder at night. One afternoon, we thought it would be a nice idea to take Sadie and one other kid for a walk down to the beach in the late afternoon. The walk ran long, afternoon turned to evening, the weather plummeted and we were NOT dressed for it. Sadie let us know about halfway through (when we were a mile from the house) that she wanted to go back inside, but instead we had to carry her back. At one point both kids were crying and our new friend Rochelle turned to us and said, "Best. Walk. Ever." We got back inside and Sadie's little fingers turned bright red and swollen and she screamed her head off for about fifteen minutes until her circulation came back to normal. Moral of this story: when your mom yelled at you to put on an extra sweater and wear gloves, SHE WAS RIGHT. YOU SHOULD HAVE LISTENED.
Anyway, we miss our friends already. It was truly a great weekend, filled with cozy fires and rounds of Trivial Pursuit and watching movies (and fourteen repetitions of "How the Grinch Stole Christmas.") And it ended with a bang -- on the ferry I got a message from our current nanny, telling me she'd gotten another job and they wanted her to start today, so that was that. No more nanny, again. The difference is, after seeing Sadie thrive this weekend, I think she might be ready to transition back into a day care again. I have a few appointments this afternoon and tomorrow, so we'll see.
Happy New Year, all.
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