Betsy Bailey

Over at Parenting.com, Alina is wondering if parents should be required to buy seats for their babies on airplanes.

My thoughts: I don’t know if it should be a law, but I wish more parents did it. We not only buy a seat for our little guy, but we schlep the car seat on board, too, and strap him right in (as you can see in the photo below).

There is no debate that this is the safest, most conservative choice. But I’m not going to argue that it should be forced upon every parent – I don’t have enough data to make that kind of call.

Safety and cost factors aside, there’s also the consideration of… being considerate.

Every time we’ve flown with Jake (two times), we’ve had the three-seat row to ourselves. But I was just on a long flight last week (3.5 hours) where a mama and her VERY restless 18 month old shared a seat in the row in front of us. It turns out that – for once! – the flight wasn’t fully booked, so mother and child ended up in separate seats anyway. (There used to be a day many years ago when you could usually count on more spaciousness like this, but that is incredibly rare on flights these days.)

The toddler was adorable and the woman they shared the row with was the easily-infatuated grandmotherly type. I was glad it was comfortable for all of them, but it did cross my mind that if that pair had been sharing the middle seat on a more crowded flight it would have been perfectly, 100% miserable for all parties concerned!

Three people sardine-canned into a row is bad enough. Adding a squirmy, restless fourth sounds like a whole new circle of hell to me. Ugh!

So I’d advise parents to keep that in mind when making their decisions about whether to purchase an extra seat, especially on longer flights with older babies. How much worse is the flight going to be for you if you’re trying to keep your little one contained and not kicking or sprawling themselves across the perfect strangers you’re scrunched in with?

It’s Labor Day weekend and given how hectic life has been for the past 10 days, I’m really looking forward to the leisure of sitting on my butt as much as I’d like for next three! I didn’t need to travel to an amusement park to experience a rollercoaster… but I’m sure glad I did!

Universal Studios and the Wizarding World of Harry Potter

A week ago today, just ONE day after Bailey’s orthopedic surgery, HM and I were packing for our all-expenses-paid trip to Universal Studios Orlando. We were specifically excited to see the brand new Wizarding World of Harry Potter theme park – and it did not disappoint. We had absolutely the best time. Universal really took care to ensure that we experienced some of the best they have to offer at the parks and resort.

Highlights for me included Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey ride in the Harry Potter park (Wow!!! We rode it twice! And when we dive-bombed the Quidditch field it took my breath away!) and the Blue Man Group performance. And butterbeer. Butterbeer is highly recommended. We tried it both frozen and unfrozen, and we tasted pumpkin juice, too.

But there was ever so much more – it was a fabulous trip and it increased my travel savvy, especially when it comes to theme parks, by several notches.

Miraculously my laptop (Dell Latitude) survived various travel misadventures (first, it was checked – long story; then I dropped it down an escalator). I was a terrible steward of its care. Of course, it could crap out any day now, too. Obviously I’m not feeling all that secure about its reliability. Scott will probably open it and tighten up the various components for me. ♥

I’m in the midst of writing up all the details of this adventure for the SheKnows travel channel. Stay tuned!

Bailey’s recovery progress

Bailey spent the first five days after her surgery doing a lot of digital drawing and resting. She was pretty doped up on painkillers. She did a little schoolwork here and there (she is enrolled in the Arizona Virtual Academy’s high school program, so all her school is at home), but she didn’t have a lot of focus. I want to feature her digital artwork here; she was very prolific during her downtime – hopefully she’ll give me permission.

By the time I returned home from Orlando Wednesday evening, she was feeling tremendously better and was mostly weaned off of the painkillers. Thursday morning she dived back into school, making a determined effort to start catching up.

At her follow-up x-ray on Thursday morning, we learned that her healing is progressing remarkably faster than the surgeon expected. He told us that you often see this when the fracture is on the growth plate and the child is in the midst of growing – those cells are extra-fast at repairing the damage. She is on track to have the pins removed a full week earlier than the surgeon had anticipated. He offered the option of removing the pins in-office or in the surgical center under anesthesia. When he said he wouldn’t know how much pain it would cause her until he tried to remove the pins (apparently they can be sticky) there was no question about how we would proceed! The procedure is scheduled at the surgical center this coming Wednesday.

I’m not sure how much longer her shoulder will be immobilized, but for now her mobility is pretty inhibited. For example, her shirt choices are currently limited to oversize button-downs. If she leaves one of the middle buttons undone, she can forgo the sling and rest her hand in the shirt opening. That has been much more comfortable for her.

Bad blog news

I started this blog on Vox in January 2007. For that entire year, I stored and accessed my blog photos on Vox – before I wised up and started storing/accessing from Flickr. Some of those 2007 entries are very photo-heavy, especially the ones from after Jake was born.

Yesterday, Vox announced they are going out of business and shutting the entire service down by September 30. They made it easy to transfer all my Vox-stored photos (498, precisely) over to my Flickr account (boy did that FUBAR my photostream chronology, but whatever) and I immediately took advantage of that.

A couple years ago, I set up this domain and WordPress installation and transferred all of my entries. Of course, all the image paths in the relevant entries still resolve to Vox, so I am now faced with the distasteful choice of letting the images disappear from those posts or undertaking the tedious chore of swapping out Vox image paths for Flickr in entries made during one of the most conscientious blogging periods of my life.

Noooooooooo.

Shoot me now, because you know what I have to do. Before September 30.

Click to see my photojournal of our camping trip to Horseshoe Lake

February 14-15, 2009: Mesquite campground at Horseshoe Lake, Verde River.

Highlights of this trip:

• The Brazaletes Pueblo ruin at the summit of St. Clair Mountain was extremely fascinating. One of the most extensive ruin sites I’ve seen (that hasn’t been developed for public interpretation, that is).

• First time camping since Scott made the dinette modification. Compared to the bench seat we had previously, the dinette is SO family friendly. The set up is much roomier and the layout is far more conversational. I liked that there was room for the hubby, a tween and the toddler to sit there while I prepared a meal and served it to them at the table. When we had the bench, there wasn’t a lot of room for other people to sit on it while I was cooking – knees in the way. And, of course, no table, so I was handing the food out. We always had to eat outside. While that is usually something we WANT to be doing, since we’re camping, after all, it was pretty cold on this trip  (got below freezing at night) so we were glad to have the dine-inside-where-it-was-warm-and-comfortable option.

• HM fell into the river once while climbing out onto a tree from the beach at our campsite. Completely drenched, from head to toe. Later, after she was dried off and in dry, warm clothes, the dog dragged her into the water’s edge from the muddy beach. Not as wet this time, but much muddier. I think HM learned her lesson and now understands why I always harp about using the gentle leader!

• It was cold weather for falling into the freezing cold river (like HM did… twice!) or sitting at icy concrete picnic table, but it was the PERFECT temperature and conditions for hiking and exploring, which we managed to do a lot of on this trip!

We got some fresh air and exercise today, as well as an eyeful of some gorgeous scenery!

We did the Treasure Loop Trail (a little over 2 miles) at Lost Dutchman State Park, mostly staying at the base of the Superstition Mountains.

It was warm enough that Jake got a little frustrated being confined to the sweaty Ergo soft pack carrier.

Click the link below to see the complete photo story.

Hiking: Lost Dutchman State Park – a set on Flickr.

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This camper was surely the best investment we have made recently. It is SO MUCH FUN!

Here are a slew of pix from our weekend and below the link a few of my faves.

http://flickr.com/photos/betsybe/sets/72157609841178619/

November 21-23, 2008. We headed out to Roosevelt Lake to camp this weekend with Scott’s parents (in their RV) and Andrea, Jay and McKenna. Friday night we enjoyed fresh-made tamales around the campfire. We had a lazy Saturday and, after a big breakfast on Sunday morning complete with bacon, eggs, hashbrowns, pancakes and fruit, we caravaned just up the road to hike up to the cliff dwelling ruins at Tonto National Forest. We shared a picnic lunch before heading home. What a fun weekend!!

Mira and her cousin got to sleepover in the grandparent’s RV!! They were in HEAVEN, can you tell??

View of the lake from our campsite:

My sister in law and father in law, but especially the artwork taped up behind them lol

Jake terrorizing the RV

Breakfast feast

Cousins playing in Grandma and Grandpa’s RV (the kids all slept in the RV – grandma and grandpa are SAINTS.)

We hiked up to this cliff dwelling:

Cool view of where we were camping (down by the lake) from where we were hiking this afternoon:

Me, hiking, with trekking poles in hand…

Cool pic of the cliff dwelling ruins. You can’t really see it in this particular photo, but the cave ceiling is totally blackened from ancient campfires. Isn’t that wild? 600 year old soot.

Scott & his dad (with Jake napping in the ergo on Scott’s back). Overlooking Roosevelt Lake at Tonto National Monument – at the base of hike up to the lower cliff dwelling ruins.

Three generations of Bailey boys

Jake took this pic during a diaper change!

After sleeping through the whole hike, Jake is rarin’ to go!

August 31 – September 1, 2008. Scotty found us the coolest campsite this weekend! Here are all the pix:
http://flickr.com/photos/betsybe/sets/72157607068930967/

We arrived at the campground around 11:30 am on Sunday afternoon. This location is so remote, that there was hardly anyone there, even though it was Labor Day weekend – wonderful!

We had time to fix and eat lunch and set up camp before a storm came through. Once it passed, we had time to take a hike and do some exploring and come back, relax for a few minutes, start the fire and prepare and eat dinner before the NEXT big storm blew through. PHEW – so lucky!

We got a new little travel crib for Jake and he slept mostly all night in it – hurrah!

Here are some of my fave pix from the set (LOL I had a hard time narrowing it down! There are still tons more in the photo set on flickr is the scary thing!

Show us your last text message.

Sent from her dad’s cell phone…

Hi mom it’s Mira how are you doing today we are in ohio we just ate. We were in a big storme last night it was scary because we heard hospital cars.

My girls are visiting their Grandma in Ohio for the next few weeks. They had pretty hellish travel yesterday! Their dad works for an airline so he can fly them on standby for a very small fee. Thing is, what with airlines cutting flights and it being summer travel season, getting standby for a 3-4 person party is TOUGH. They missed out on two direct flights before they finally got on board a flight with a Chicago connection. Then it stormed en route to Columbus from Chicago. The girls were pretty frightened, they said – they were in the thunder and lightening as they made their descent. Ack! I don’t think that’s even happened to ME and I’ve flown lots.

The storm continued well after they landed all during their one hour drive to Grandma’s house (apparently a tornado also touched down in the Columbus area). They left their dad’s house in Phoenix around 9 am PST yesterday and arrived at their grandma’s at 2 am EST.

Ughhhh.

Anyway, all is well, but it made quite an impression on them…