Well, here’s the inagural post my newest blog and foray into the wide world of “Mommy blogging” — Mommy Misadventures. I’m your hostess and Mommy to The Little Empress (TLE).
I suppose that since this is a Mommy blog, I ought to start off with some type of Mommy-ish observation, so here’s mine for today:
Stop lights are Evil ™.
My daughter has only recently gotten used to riding in a car. From her very first car ride until she was about 3 months old, she would do nothing but S C R E A M at the top of her little lungs whenever she was in a car. As such, The Hubster and I rarely left the apartment (save for doctor’s office trips) with her. A cautious trip out when she was 6 weeks old resulted in her screaming for nearly an hour straight while stuck in traffic. In fact, I still have a 15 second clip on my cell phone of her crying hysterically while stuck on the 101 on our way to San Jose for a family get together. Neither The Hubster’s nor my own nerves easily recovered from that trip.
Needless to say, we learned our lesson from that outing and didn’t take her out again unless absolutely necessary until she had hit the ripe old age of about 12 weeks. Around this time, she miraculously began to tolerate the car more. Notice I said “tolerate” and not “like”. She has yet to show signs of liking the car but seeing as her tolerating her car rides means relative quiet for her fellow passengers, we’ll gladly take her toleration.
At 12 weeks, toleration was reserved for the immediate buckling in of The Little Empress into her sedan chair carseat — a Evenflo Trimph Advance Deluxe for the curious — and speeds of over 70mph. Seeing that the majority of her trips didn’t include freeway travel, we were still stuck with a crying baby but at least there was some hope of reprieve on the occasions that we did travel by highway.
As she got older, she began to tolerate longer car trips with lower speeds. Now that she’s about 20 weeks old, I am relieved to say that she can (usually) tolerate quickie trips to and from the supermarket at speeds of 45mph or less with crying for less than half the trip. Sometimes. Which, frankly, is a lot better than it used to be so I’m not complaining (much).
When I’m really lucky, she’ll even tolerate a complete stop. But more often than not, a complete stop will jolt The Little Empress awake, followed by a wail of protest. As such, I’ve come to utterly loathe stop lights with every fiber of my being but not yet enough to run red lights. Screaming baby vs. putting my child in danger and possibly getting a stupidly avoidable ticket? I’ll take the screaming baby, thanks.
On a related note: More than just stopped traffic, nothing angers The Little Empress more than the fast food take out window. The prolonged stop (and possibly the odor of french fries) is nothing short of treason in her eyes. A quick stop to Jack In the Box near our house today set my little girl off like a siren. She began wailing after I place my order and didn’t stop until we were home and I had scooped her out of her seat.
I suppose this should put some shame in me and make me stop visiting fast food places as much as I do or at least think twice about it while I’m ferrying around The Little Empress. But, alas, I am a fast food whore and the allure of previously frozen, processed fried potatoes wins out more often than I really should feel comfortable admitting.
