Re-entry

Finn took his first flight when he was just four months old, and he's now got enough frequent flier miles on multiple airlines to score himself a free ticket to Coachella - or wherever it is the 5-year olds are going to "experiment" these days.  With her first trip clocking in at two months, Edie is on par to double his totals.  I won't tell him that, of course.  He'd just get angry.  He needs to win.  Like his Daddy.

Flying to Key West last year, we took a red-eye out and a late night flight back.  It didn't work out so well, as we didn't get any sleep on either end.  So being geniuses, we did the exact same thing this year.  

Sleeping between/under two children on an overnight cross-country flight has got to be what it's like to survive a night in prison.  You have to keep one eye open at all times to make sure that no one is going to shiv and/or throw up on you.  It doesn't help when the family behind you waits until 3 AM to begin discussing crucial vacation planning items, loudly, in a foreign language - so I can't even offer feedback.  I think I fell asleep for a minute toward the end of the first flight, until Finn sleep-karate-chopped me in the throat.  Seriously.  That put an end to any attempt at sleep and I spent the remainder of that leg catching up on NBC's "The Face".

My God, that show looks terrible.

But that's all behind us now, and we're back at home, where we can once again peacefully relax now that Edie has fallen into a nice predictable nap pattern:  5 minutes in the morning and about 25 minutes in the afternoon, as long as someone sleeps with her and/or stands over her crib, picking her up and sticking her pacifier back in her mouth every two seconds while rocking her back to sleep.  It's just as peaceful as it sounds.

At least her skin has cleared up, so she doesn't look quite as much of a 10 week old meth addict as she did a couple of weeks ago.  Which is great.  Our lawn was starting to fill up with shady daycare tweakers.  And that's not good for property values.

But it's not all craptastic.  We had our second parent/teacher conference at Finn's school today and got his stellar report card from his teacher.  Now given, he's still in pre-school, so his grades are all presented in varying degrees of "participation" and "effort" - not unlike my grades from Penn State - but it was still all great news.  In fact, Kitty and I didn't recognize the description of this apparently helpful and courteous "Finn Parker" the teacher kept talking about, but we decided that if he had to choose in which place he'd be cool and in which place he'd be an a-hole, we'd go with public for the former and home for the latter.  At least that way we look like decent parents from the outside.

I told Finn about his report card and how proud we were of him as I was picking him up this afternoon.  Without even looking at me, he just casually replied as he was getting into the car, "That's awesome."

Whatever.  He can be as nonchalant as he wants.  He's earned it - and he keeps earning it with every blissful hour that he sleeps.  His sister, on the other hand, has some serious making up to do...