Documentation of fatherhood insanity: June 2012

Warning: This is along one!

Things I have Learned:

1. The term : “Eurabia”

You-ray-bee-a

1. –noun

Made up place where American babies dressed up like little European babies get sent. For example, if you live in New York and put your baby in a French beret and short shorts with high socks, they will get sent to Eurabia.

Example "after accidentally putting Sammy in short-short overalls and sandals - we learned our lesson. We don't want our baby to be a Euraby and get sent to Eurabia"

Things we learned about long flights with a child:

1. no matter what, you forgot something

2. The books you choose will no longer be relevant by the time you land

3. Sammy couldn’t care less about watching videos on the ipad. We really should have done some pre flight iPad training.

4. Try not to sit next to a baby hater.

5. I respond more to the advice of hot Israeli flight attendants than my wife. After giving up and letting Sammy crawl around on the dirty plane floor (despite Danielle’s complaints) – the motivation to get him off it was when the flight attendant told me how gross the floor was – not Danielle

6. Before the baby hater, we sat next to the “Angel Baby”. Sammy is going bonkers, crawling everywhere, leaving a pile of destruction in his wake. Meanwhile (before they moved to a bigger seat) we were sitting next to an Israeli angel baby. This little girl, just 4 months older than Sammy is sitting nicely, reading a magazine, offering Sammy her dinner and toys. She lies down when her mom said to…unreal. Of course, we had the last laugh. As we were leaving the plane we saw her in their new seats. Poor angel baby had projectile vomited during landing.

7. There’s a new baby management art form – I’m calling it “Precision Milk Delivery”. It entails the ability to precisely time the moment you give your child milk to ensure that his ears don’t hurt while taking off and landing. The desire to not have your child screaming in pain at this moment will induce Cold sweat. Feverish debate. Hide milk until last second. Pray he drinks it slow enough so it doesn't run out if you timed it wrong.

8. The best part about the flight was when we landed in Israel and made the hand off to the grandparents. VERY needed!

You know those things that you think are inevitable? I’ve been waiting for months for it to happen. And it finally did. Poop in the pool. It finally happened. Thank goodness for a swim diaper. No mess!

What do you do when your child gets 103.5 fever in a random kibbutz in ein gedi? Call the "kibbutz nurse" who will tell you- "it's nothing too serious. Put him in a cold bath for a bit". Ummmm…

Do Israeli parents no something I don’t know? We were with our good friend Yifat – who has a 3 year old named Omer. We are hanging out in the hotel when Yifat says “Omer, please take a nap”. Omer promptly gets onto the bed, and goes to sleep. For 2+ hours. While we sat around talking. WTF!?!?!

Note to self: do not take one year old hiking at 12pm in hot climates. They will get uncomfortably hot. And then have a complete meltdown.

The greatest thing ever: Sammy’s jetlag. Because it was responsible for the “9 to 9” schedule. By that I mean, for the first week of vacation Samson slept from 9pm past 9am! Incredible.

We performed an experiment to find out the following: Do Israeli Cheerios taste like American ones? Sammy says: yes, please.

With the intense heat we tried to get Sammy drinking more water. It went something like this as he learned to work his sippy cup: Drink.choke on water.drink.choke on water and begin drinking before choking has ceased. Repeat. Every day. Over and over. And over. At least he's drinking!

Traveling with 1 year old is funny: The look of confusion every morning when he woke up in a new place (especially if he had fallen asleep before we arrived was priceless. He was often so confused he didn’t really yell for us to get him.

I’ve got to hand it to Danielle for a few of her pre-trip purchases. Best buy: baby crocs. Followed closely by disposable swim diapers.

Sammy is just about ready now for a 9^th grade high school Israel trip: He fell asleep on every car ride instead of listening to our guide.

Sitting in a baby wading pool is fascinating. You pretty much know you are sitting in a million kids' pee. But somehow you do it anyway. Sammy liked it. And probably contributed. Gross.

My hopes for Sammy liking Star Wars have increased. The longer the trip went the more Sammy babbled. By the end if you closed your eyes it was like driving around with R2D2.

Kudos again to Danielle. The truth is, we don’t often cut Sammy’s nails. Our wonderful nanny does. By week 2, this kid had razor sharp talons. But every time we tried to cut them he would flail and scream. Danielle’s idea: Cut them while he’s sleeping in the car. How she managed that without waking him up I’ll never know.

The end of 9 to 9 was PAINFULLY sad.

Sammy decided to use Israel as a testing ground for his ability to get us to “cave.” 2-3 times a day he would do the “stroller” protest. This involved arching his back to prevent his insertion into the stroller while yelling/screaming in our faces. I learned that I am not a caver. Not sure he did though….

You haven’t lived until you’ve had suntan lotion explode all over your stroller. You really haven’t.

Trying to put suntan lotion on a one year old is like…well – It’s not that fun, let’s leave it at that.

Several words to describe the plane ride home:

- 2 hours on the tarmack (bad).

- Diaper rash from hell (scary).

- Upgrade (nice).

- Wee hours of the night yelling (bad for people we upgraded next to).

At this point, I’m pretty numb to Samson's crying, no matter how loud and insane it may be. But, on a plane? Holy cow. His crying is amplified by one million decibels - and even the slightest peep is painful! Let's just say that the hours of 4am to 8am were, um, not fun. Samson later went around to every person in our section apologizing. And by that I mean walking up to them, occasionally poking them or chewing on their arm rest, showing them an adorable smile and saying (usually) "dadadadadadadadadabe"

My son is 13 months old and he has already picked up more Israeli women than I ever did. Ugh.

While he might not be clapping to the song - when we sing Sammy "If you're happy and you know it" he does the clapping parts with his voice. That counts for something, right!?!

Important Statistics(and things) we are keeping track of:

Number of times I was kicked in the balls on the plane by Samson while he was sleeping: Well, the pain erased my memory but I think 3.
Number of Israeli waitresses/flight attendants Sammy picked up: at least 6.
Israeli foods tasted: Schnitzel, schwarama, falafel, hummus, choco, Yotveta chocolate milk...and the list goes on
Number of people referred to as "Da-ddy, Da-ddy" - pretty much everyone in Israel expect for his actual mom and dad.
New words that were mastered: "Daddy", "no", "uh-oh", "oh no", "Woah", the more emphatic "nononononononononono!", "yeah!"
Number of times we had to give Sammy a cold bath so his 103.5 fever would go down: 1
Number of seconds Sammy stodd on his own without support while not knowing what he was doing - at least 20!

Pictures for your amusement:

Pre-flight happiness

Let the mayhem begin

He watched this for thirtyseconds. maybe it was less....

List of babies that are WAY TOO BIG for the infant bassinet. Sammy slept in this for about 5 minutes before trying to stretch out and nearly falling right out.

From left to right: Insanity slowly dying down at about 10:30pm. Slowwwwwwwwly. And, we're out.

Euraby

Hanging out at the Tel Aviv Beach with Omer

"Sammy, This is the ocean"

Happy mornings with Ido

pitapitapitapitapitapitapitapitapita

Learning Djembe with Aunty Gavy

We dragged this crazy hiking backpack halfway around the world and I'll be damned if we didn't do everything in our power to use it (Thank you HB and Dane)