J and I sort of planned our holiday time off badly. For some reason he thought I was taking the whole week of Christmas off whereas I thought he was taking the week after Christmas off – either way our lack of communication was evident since our vacations weren’t exactly scheduled for the same times and he ended up having to work most of the New Year weekend leaving Ava and I to make the road trip to my parents’ place by ourselves.
Despite my best intentions of leaving early…it didn’t happen. (This is totally normal for me, by the way. I can’t imagine anyone actually believes me anymore when I say we’ll be there on time, much less early.)
Ava’s packing assistance left a lot to be desired.
I asked her to put her blankets and toys that she wanted to take in the bag. Not so much help, as you can see.
We did finally get on the road and made it just in time for the snow and ice to start. Since I loathe anything remotely winter, I was uber stressed about the weather and the possibility of getting snowed in. All this was on top of not being able to spend the New Year with J and Ava being quite confused as to why her daddy wasn’t around.
There were quite a few visitors over that night so Ava was a little more wound up than usual. She also didn’t eat much of her dinner (too many people around), started giving me attitude (still too many people around, some of whom thought obnoxious things she was doing was cute – they weren’t), didn’t get a bath, and got to bed a little later than normal. Since Ava is a creature of habit and routine all of these things were Not Good.
Also not good was the fact that I didn’t set up her pack and play but instead put her onto her Aero toddler mattress. We’d done a very successful trial run with this during a hotel stay earlier in the month so J convinced me to try it. So I did.
Let’s just say it was a big fat FAIL.
I got her to sleep relatively easily. She was so tired that she fell asleep in my arms and only stirred a teeny bit when I laid her down on the mattress. I surrounded her with her blankets, books, and stuffed animals and headed back out to watch a little TV with my folks. There was nary a peep from the baby monitor all evening so I figured we were golden.
Yeah. Until I walked in the room a couple of hours later and couldn’t find my baby.
I tiptoed in, shut off the music playing for her, and quietly got ready to climb into my own bed. As is my habit, I walked over to peek at her and found…nothing. Her bed was empty.
At first I thought she’d simply rolled out of bed so I turned my phone on to use the light before realizing she wasn’t there. I thought maybe she’d climbed into my bed – not there, either. Nor was she beside the bed or anywhere else easily visible.
I flipped out, of course. I was terrified. Seriously, my heart stopped beating for a moment. I looked everywhere.
And then I found her:
She’d scooted the rocking chair over to the head of the air mattress, climbed under it, tucked a blanket under her head to use as a pillow, and was sleeping on the very cold, hardwood floor.
And yes, I did stop to take a picture of this before scooping her up because this was my proof to show J that we did actually try the air mattress (with near disastrous results). Picture quality is poor because it’s my phone camera and it was dark-ish in the room.
Needless to say, I scared the heck out of her (but not nearly as much as she scared me) when I woke her. I then promptly deflated the air mattress and then dragged out and set up the pack and play conveniently stored there. Fortunately she was back to sleep in a matter of minutes, safely caged and secured for the remainder of the night (and for our entire visit).
I didn’t sleep much that night. That kind of fear, just that short moment of not knowing where she was, kept me up and checking on her all night long. I’m really not going to handle the teenage years well, I don’t think.