Wayne and Rebecca Madsen

A chronology.

Travelling with Paela can sometimes be easy and sometimes be an experiment on boundaries of social space. While we are able to arrange ourselves to a position in which she won't kick anyone sitting next to us on the plane, trying to restrain her from offering half-eaten crackers to her neighbor is a bit more of a challenge.

She likes to play the sharing game, where she offers one item to someone in the expectation that she will be given something in return. Then, upon receiving that new item, she returns it to the person and requests her original item. Repeat this for a long time and you understand better the sharing game. Lather, rinse, repeat. Sadly, 3-year olds don't quite play this game the same and so Paela had some difficulty playing with her 3-year old cousin.

But we arrived in Michigan just in time for a foot and a half of snow to drop, blanketing the ground and restricting all travel. We tried to help Paela play in the snow, but having been a California baby at heart, she complained about the cold and wet most of the time. Rebecca joined her in the sled and I pulled them through the mess, but struggling through deep snow with a heavy load wears you down fast. Still, she did enjoy the sled ride even though we never got around to finding some good sledding hills.

Cabin fever set in for me quickly after the second day of being trapped. Despite the (almost) blizzard outside, we braved the crazy weather to drive to our favorite sandwich shop just to get out of the house. This was probably a stupid idea, but reminded me of our Germany trip adventures, so at least I'll have the memory of being stupid to stay with me for years to come.

Letting a toddler play in a non-baby-proof house is an exhausting experience. We never could let Paela out of our sight -- the alternative being that at home we often let her wander. She has a fair bit of wanderlust. However, the best part of Grandma and Grandpa's house are the many levels of stairs. Up, down, climbing, descending, throwing things off the stairs. She never tired of the stairs and not once requested to go outside because there was so much to explore inside.

We still took her outside as much as we could. While she was content inside, Rebecca and I were in no mood to be confined. I admire our friends Sara and Jarem for all the travels they manage to fit in their lives, despite two little boys; I used to think we were well-travelled people, but no longer. While visiting my parents, we managed to get to the petting farm, the hands-on museum, natural history museum, an indoor swimming pool, visited a handful of friends and Frankenmuth. Paela liked the geese best at the petting zoo, followed closely by the dog. There was a toddler area in the hands-on museum where she spent a good hour going up and down the slide. While driving up to Frankenmuth, Paela made up some games to play with her uncle Victor and she especially got a kick out of covering herself in the blanket and pretending she wasn't there.

Christmas morning, we slept in until Paela woke up. By that point, she was sleeping until 8:30, but was rapidly acclimating herself to the new time zone. It was nice to have Paela stay up so late with us and sleep in so late. She is still much too young to understand Christmas as different from any other day, but by the end of it all, she got really into ripping paper and opening presents. It became another game which is similar to the other learning games she currently enjoys. She likes to learn about in and out and opening and closing and on and off. She would go into a bathroom with the lights off, close the door and wait for someone to open it again. Then she would close it from the inside. Then repeat. The adults played lots of games of Zooloretto after the kids went to bed.

We were surprised to note how well Paela became accustomed to new people. The first moment she saw her uncle Martin, she appeared close to tears. However, only after half a day with her aunt Camilla, she was willing to take peas out of Camilla's mouth using just her own mouth. Gross, I know, but Paela thinks it's worlds of fun. Similarly, she likes to point out body parts: head, nose, mouth, tongue, eyes, ears, toes, belly button. There's nothing quite like a toddler raising her dress to show off her belly button in the middle of sacrament.

But we came back. Home felt like home this time. [it doesn't always] Even though there were two cats at my parent's house, Paela was most happy to see our cat when we got home. Shrieking with delight, she has followed that cat everywhere for the past two days.

P.S. last item. While in Frankenmuth, we splurged and took Paela on a horse driven carriage ride. At first, Paela was curious but as the ride moved along and she figured out what was going on she enjoyed every second of it. Once we get the videos of her giggling during the ride from my sister, I'll post them.