A weekend to myself

That's right. This weekend, Chad and Cora are in Texas, and by some fluke, I was not scheduled to work at Starbucks. I had many plans to spend the full 48 hours scrapbooking, but when I went to look at the desk that was heaped with mail, cords for who knows what sort of electronics, and, yes, scrapbook paper, I realized that I could do nothing creative until I'd cleaned the house.

Lame, yes, husband and baby gone, no work, and I clean the house. Well, first I went for a jaunt on the elliptical machine at the Y - since I never have time for that anymore - then, I felt energized for an afternoon of intense cleaning. A mere four hours of vacuuming, washing, drying, Lysoling, scrubbing, and mopping later, and I sat on my couch, beer in hand, admiring my clean handiwork. Okay, I was ready to scrapbook. Oh, wait, I need a little inspiration first. I pulled out my new copy of "clean & simple scrapbooking" by Cathy Zielske and immediately felt the rays of creative energy seeping from the pages.

One paragraph in particular really stopped me: "It seems there is an underground travel agency that preys on new scrapbookers. They sell them advance tickets to a place called Caught Up. Geographically speaking, I have no idea where Caught Up is, but here's what I've managed to piece together. Most scrapbookers who buy their tickets never actually take the trip. And the few who do manage to board that plane to this imaginary land of milk and Hermafix discover the following: a sterile hotel with rooms of completed albums carefully lined up on numerous shelves - and that's it...It's very quiet there. And from what I hear, insanely boring...So if you've already bough that ticket, return it. Be a person who never stops exploring the process. Finish pages and be proud of what you've created. Don't lose joy to the notion that you should be somewhere called Caught Up, and that lots of other people are there, having the time of there lives. Remember these two words - insanely boring. Or at least that's what I've heard."

I'm not really the type of person who takes advice merely because it's handed to me, but I do think this advice is worthwhile, and likely not only for scrapbookers. Many people are looking for the land of Caught Up. Well, I'm attempting to let go of this fantasy land. I'm going to enjoy a quiet moment of scrapbook inspiration with Miss Cathy Zielske and Shiner Bock, then I'm going out to dinner with friends, and maybe later tonight, I'll spend some time just enjoying the presence of my mountain of beautiful scrapbook paper, not rushed to cut it all up and cover it with paste, but eager to begin another journey with it, a journey of Munich and Prague and Krakow. We'll take it a bit at a time.

Munchen

We met our law school friends and former neighbors, Kathy & Adam, in Munchen (aka "Munich"). Since they'd already been there a couple of days, they toured us around the major sights.


Here we all are in front of the Rathaus. As you can see, the baby backpack was fully operational, and little Cora was even protected from the dreary Deutsche drizzle.

-->Baby travel note: In the case that other parents have found this blog with such desperate search terms as "baby Europe backpack how to?!" (which I myself used only a month ago), I'll be posting these baby travel notes. Here you see Cora (7 months, 17 pounds) in the Kelty backpack. We tried on several brands, and this was the only one that fit both of us and Cora. So, before you spend all night reading amazon reviews (like I did), go try them out with your baby to see if there is even more than one option. In here, we stored all of her daily needs: diapers, wipes, bags, several bottles, spare formula in a tupperware container, toys, pacifier wipes, burp cloths, and blankets, as well as Chad's sweatshirt and hat.

Cora very much enjoyed being able to see the sights from her backpack, and she could take short 10-30 minute naps when she was completely exhausted, but she did miss her regular nap times.

That afternoon, uncle Curtis came in from Bonn to meet Cora for the first time! We also introduced Cora to the beautiful combination of beer and pretzels. (Do note that this is a joke. Cora did not drink any beer. She did, however, munch on some pretzel, although it took us a few minutes of Cora's sickened facial expressions to figure out that we should scrape off the giant grains of salt.)

As much as we love Germany, we were off to the Czech Republic. We rented a car (+car seat and GPS) and drove to Prague. I'll opt not to relive the rest of the evening, since it involved attempting to find a castle, getting utterly lost, having no Euros with which to buy dinner, starving ourselves (even pregnant Kathy!) until we finally reached Czech and could stop for a midnight kebab, and finding a place to park the car at 3am in Prague. Upcoming in the next post: the more pleasant experience of Prague.

Packing for Europe with Baby

We've just come back from three weeks in Europe with 7-month-old Cora, and, yes, it was mildly absurd. We'd decided years ago that after Chad finished the bar exam, we'd take a trip to Europe to celebrate. There's nothing absurd about that, it's tradition for most law school grads. After Cora came into the picture, we decided that we weren't going to let a little baby put a halt to our plans, and, besides, she might like traveling Europe. I'll soon post about Munich, Prague, Krakow, Bonn, Berlin, Moscow, Inverness, and Edinburgh, but for now, here's a list of what we packed for Cora:

120 diapers
2 large packages of wipes (88 in each)
150 diaper trash bags
6 bottles (3 large, 3 small)
70 oz of formula (3 large Enfamil bags)
12 onsies
3 pants
1 sweater
12 socks
1 pair of sandals
5 toys
2 books
3 pacifiers
pacifier wipes
Travel bottles of shampoo, bubble bath, lotion, sunscreen
Thermometer, Children's Tylenol, Children's Benadryl
Fingernail clippers
6 blankets
30-40 burp cloths
A pop-up tent, complete with air mattress
An inflatable bathtub
A baby bjorn
A baby-carrying backpack

-->The one item I really wish I'd brought: A hat!

We made it almost the entire 22 days with the allotted formula and diapers, but we had to restock in Inverness to cover the last 2 days. We didn't want to buy supplies in Eastern Europe or Russia, so we figured we'd just attempt to use our own for the whole trip, which I think was good because her system didn't end up reacting well to the UK formula, and it was more expensive there anyway.

Before Cora, Chad and I would travel through Europe with one backpack each. For this trip, we had one backpacking backpack, a baby backpack, two rolling bags, and a small duffel. I suppose that's not too bad, but it certainly felt bulky when we were moving from place to place every couple of days.

More about the actual travel tomorrow!