He’s not the only one.

Since The King and I have planned all along to take our kids on adventures like this we had to plan things a little differently then if it would have just been the two of us.  First off The King did a little internet research and found the roller bag most recommended for kids to use, at the best price.  As soon as it arrived in the mail we made a pretty big deal about it to Babboo and hyped him up to use it on our trip.  We loaded it for a test run and had him practice with it around the house.  Babboo was excited to be considered big enough to be in charge of his own suitcase.  The King and I were excited that he was finally old enough to help carry his own weight.

We knew the only time Babboo would actually have to pull his roller bag was when we went from hotel to airport/train station and vice versa.  When we packed we made sure to spread our stuff out between the roller bag I’d  be in charge of, the backpack The King would carry and the roller bag Babboo would have. That way if, Heaven forbid, something happened to one of the bags we’d all still have underwear and an outfit to get by.  We kept Babboo’s bag as light as possible.

It worked out perfectly.  Babboo was able to maneuver the bag over bumps and curbs and load into trains without too much assistance.  If he got tired of pulling it The King and I were always there to take it for him for a few blocks.  But overall Babboo was a trooper.

As always The King was in charge of carrying the brunt of the luggage.  And, as always, he was also in charge of all map reading.  He says he doesn’t like having all the directional pressure on him, but I believe differently.  I know he secretly thrives on navigation all subway and train rides.

This time around I was in charge of Rerun.  I too did some research on how best to navigate around Europe with a 11 month old.  After trying out a few of my friends carriers I settled on the Ergo carrier.  I saved up my birthday money and found one on craigslist.  It was in good shape and the right price.  Plus it and was black.  (Which, let’s be honest, is my number one requirement!)

I carried my (not so) little baby everywhere we went.  Including hiking in the Cinque Terre.

What I liked most about the Ergo (which is not paying me to say this) was that Rerun could take a nap while we went about our sightseeing.  We didn’t have to go back to our hotel room and we didn’t have to feel guilty for not going back to the hotel room.  He was perfectly happy sleeping all cozy up against me.

And while the temperature in Europe in August can get pretty high, I never got too hot.  If I did get a little tired, which didn’t happen very often, The King was always willing to carry him in the Ergo on his back.

Even though it may not appear so, Rerun loved the Ergo.

Babboo was only two the last time we took him to Europe and therefore doesn’t remember anything from that trip.  (He claims to remember that we let him pee on the beach, but I don’t know if I believe him.)  He didn’t remember the glorious food in Berlin.  Most notably the döner kebab.  When he saw his first döner at the shop at Yorkstraße, which according to the locals is the best one, he audible gasped.

I admit I did too.

While we didn’t actively seek it out, we stopped at a remaining section of The Berlin Wall during our week in Germany.  I told Babboo to stand by it so I could take his picture.  I figured it would be a picture he’d like to see as an adult.  He asked us both what it was he was standing by.  The King and I looked at each other and just shook our heads.  This was not the time or the place to get into the horror that is Hitler.

We spent some time inside Tacheles looking at all the cool art.  Since it’s an abandoned building there were no lights and the place stunk like a sewer.  The place made Babboo a little nervous and I thought about the juxtaposition of The Wall and the art at Tacheles and how it should have been the wall that made him nervous, not Tacheles.

While Tacheles is one of The King’s favorite things about Berlin, I personally love Tiergarten.  Tiergarten is like the Central Park of Berlin.  Babboo was disappointed with the park and made the comment, “how can they call it a park? It’s all just grass.  There aren’t even any toys to play on here!”

Touché.

Babboo’s old enough now that The King and I can use him as sort of a tripod and we can finally get pictures of he and I together.  Although, like his father, he prefers to be a little more artsy in his photo taking.

I reminded him time and time again that taking upside down pictures wasn’t as clever as he thought it was.

Sure the boys won’t remember details from this trip.  But we had fun while we were there.

Next stop, Italy.

Years later when my older brother was away at college I called him at his dorm late at night.  I could hear my parents fighting and yelling at each other.  I don’t remember what they were fighting about, I only remember it being loud and me being scared enough to call my brother.  I was so scared because I never heard my parents fight like that so I figured it must be so bad that they were going to split up.

I can think of one other time in my childhood that I remember hearing my parents raise their voices at each other.  This isn’t to say that my parents had the perfect marriage.  They had issues just like any other couple.  Some pretty big issues.  They just always kept their cool around us kids.

I am not my mother.

Almost five years of being someone’s mom and I’m now just realizing how impatient I am and how frustrated I get.  These last week’s I’ve been paying attention to the way I handle situations with Babboo and comparing it to the way my own mom would have handled it.  For the life of me I can’t figure out how she could be in a similar situation and not raise her voice.  Not only am I made up of this woman’s DNA but I was also raised by her.  She was a stay-at-home mom during my formative years and so I would think all of my own parenting skills would have been learned from her.

I get frustrated with Babboo a lot.  A lot, a lot.  He also gets frustrated with me.  It’s not unusual to hear him raising his voice with me.

“You’re not understanding what I’m saying!”

He’s right, I’m not.  I’ll ask him questions to help me understand and that frustrates him which then frustrates me more and we get both get upset.  I’m fighting with a four year old.  And not usually winning.

Last night I was playing “pizza”* with him.  He wanted to use some of my craft supplies and got upset when I told him he couldn’t use my fancy paper and instead gave him some other paper to use.  This set off a whole chain of events.  I tried to think about what my mom would do in this situation.

“I’m getting frustrated so I’m going to go and take a break for a minute.”

I left the room which just made Babboo more upset.  Eventually The King had to get involved and calm the situation down.

That didn’t work out like I thought it would.

And it’s not just situations like this.  Babboo has heard The King and I raise our voices at each other.  He’s seen us fight.  It doesn’t seem to faze him. Which I’ve realized means that he’s so used to it that he thinks it’s normal.

I don’t want my children to think it’s normal to hear their parents fight.  I don’t want them to look back at their childhood and only remember that their mommy was always yelling.  This isn’t your typical Mommy Guilt.  This is me trying to figure out how to be as good of a mom to my little kids as my mom was to me.

My mom and dad are coming out to visit this weekend and I’m going to do something I should have been doing all along.  I’m going to watch them interact with my kids and with each other and try to learn a little something.

So tell me, what positive parenting skills did you learn from your parents?

*Someone pretends to be the “pizza maker” (Babboo) and the other person is the customer (Mom).  The customer comes in and requests a pizza and then the maker quickly makes a pizza, and toppings, out of paper to sell you.  It’s just about as fun as it sounds.

• Christmas was good.  The King wanted this year to be “magical” for Babboo.  We figured we only have a few good years of him totally believing in Santa Claus and we’d better take advantage of it.  Needless to say Babboo was spoiled a little more then I’m totally comfortable with.

• For the first time in our ten year marriage The King and I sat down and wrote out actual goals for 2011.  One of them is to go out on a Date Night at least once a month (for a total of 15 times in the calendar year.)  We’re going out tonight and again next Monday.

• Speaking of next Monday….we’re going to see Rhett Miller and The Old 97’s!!!  Hooray.  We haven’t seen them since back when I was knocked up.  We’re both pretty excited.  The King’s already written up the songs he wants them to play.  And I’m trying to get up the courage to DM Rhett Miller to see if we can get back stage.  Gulp.

• One of my personal goals for the year is to post to my blog at least once a week.  Back in December I paid for my blog for the next year.  I want something to show for the money I paid.

• One of The King’s goals is to be more consistent in doing yoga.  He decided that he wanted to go off dairy to help him with his flexibility.   There are two things I don’t like about this:

• • He didn’t discuss this before hand with the rest of the family, so Babboo and I didn’t have a vote.
  • Dude, I DO NOT want to go off dairy.

• We’ve recently become obsessed with both Nick Kroll.  You must search the interweb and listen to him.  Our favoritea are El Cupacabra and the Ed Hardy Boys.  We can’t stop saying “que pasa baby” at our house. Even Babboo says it.

• And I know we’re about ten years behind on this, but we’ve also recently become obsessed with Tosh.0.  We DVR’d all of the old episodes and have been watching them the last few weeks.  Tosh.0 reminds me of why the internet is so awesome.  And for that, I thank him.

• Due to policy changes at the school district my dad has taught at for the last 24 years he was forced to retire over Christmas break.  It was either that or lose his pension.  He had two days to make the decision and once he submitted his paper work he couldn’t return to work.  No time to say good-bye to his students or prepare them for it.  They just came back after Christmas break to find that their favorite teacher was no longer there.  And so now my dad is retired and wasn’t mentally prepared to be retired yet.  He’s recently become even more obsessed with Facebook and his status updates are getting a little creepy.  I hope nobody tell him about Twitter.

• • Seriously, don’t tell him.

• While I was on maternity leave the company The King works for moved a block away from my office.  Again for the first time in our ten year marriage we’ve been meeting for lunch every now and again.  It’s pretty cool to spend time with him away from Babboo and Rerun and be reminded that we actually enjoy each others company and that we can still make each other laugh.  (I think we’re supposed to meet today. Which would mean we’re having lunch AND dinner together today.)

• I went back to Weight Watchers last week.  There is so much to say about this and yet, so little I want to say.

• We went to Vancouver, Canada last weekend.  We usually pay about $35 a day to park at the hotel.  (The hotel that we get on Priceline for less then $70.  Do the math.  We’re getting screwed on parking.)  Last weekend we tried just parking for free on the street.  Totally worked.  Saved us a ton of money.

(This is us in front of the 2010 Olympic Torch last weekend.  We’re a little late on this too.)

• The King gave me a new type of calendar for Christmas and I’ve had to learn a new way to keep track of my schedule.  It’s embarrassing how hard it’s been for me to change my way of thinking.  I guess us old people do get stuck in our ways.

• So tell me, is there something you’ve wanted to blog about for a while, but just could never seem to write an entire post about?

(I have no idea why when I use bullet points in a post my font gets all messed up.  Please forgive how lame this looks.  Unless you’re using a reader.  Then I’m sure it looks just fine.)

Merry Christmas from my little family to yours.

We’d never snowshoed before so we spent the weeks leading up to this trip buying all the needed supplies.  The King already had his own snowshoes so we only had to buy some for Babboo and me.  Babboo just barley didn’t fit into his snowsuit, so we had to get him a new one.  Plus some gloves.  Thankfully Babboo and I both already had some boots we could wear.  I don’t own any snow pants and The King does so he let me borrow his gators and I just wore my long-johns, leggings and super warm wool socks.  Some friends gave us a fabulous fleece suit for Rerun and it fit him perfectly.  All I had to do was dress him as warm as I could, put a cozy hat on him and some socks over his little biddy hands.  (Do they even make gloves for someone that tiny?)

We never bought a backpack for Babboo and so we borrowed one from some friends so The King could carry Rerun on his back.

Needless to say, this took up most of the back of our car and some of our roof rack.

Once in Vancouver we did a little research and decided where we wanted to snowshoe at.  We woke up a little early on Saturday so we could get on the mountain as quick as possible.  We wanted to be on the road by nine.

Babboo has a hard time staying focused on getting dressed in the morning and I have a baby I have to nurse, plus The King and I both had to get ourselves ready.  We didn’t leave by nine.

(No surprise, right?)

The ski resort was a little outside of the city and by the time we got there Rerun needed to eat again.  When I climbed in the back of the car to feed him I realized he’s peed through the warm clothes I’d dressed him in.  Thankfully I brought a spare outfit, but it wasn’t as warm.  I changed him in the back of the car, hoping he wasn’t freezing.  The plan was for The King to get Babboo dressed in his snow gear and get his snowshoes strapped on while I quickly fed Rerun.

The morning was already not going as planned and we were all starting to get a little stressed out.  To add to that Babboo had never tried on his snowshoes, so The King had to give him a quick lesson on snowshoeing while I sat in the back of the car feeding the baby.  The snowshoe lesson didn’t go so well and added to the stress of the day a little more.

Once the baby was fed I had to get him dressed in his winter suit as well as get myself dressed.  At this point the snowshoe lesson really wasn’t going well.

“My gloves aren’t on right.”

“My hat keeps covering my eyes.”

“My pants are too big.”

“It’s too hard to walk in snowshoes.”

“I’m cold.”

“I’m hungry.”

I got out of the car and headed over to get a map of the area and pay for our passes for the day.  The plan was that The King would get Rerun in the backpack and all meet me over at ski resort office.

By the time The King and the boys met up with me things had escalated way past “stressful” and were in full blown “let’s just go home” mode.  Rerun didn’t like the backpack and was screaming and Babboo was still complaining.

I was on board to just call it a day and head back to our warm hotel room.

Instead of just packing it up, right then and there, The King and I tried to calm down and talk it out.  We were both pretty stressed and were questioning what in the world we were thinking when we planned to take our four year old and three month old snowshoeing.  Seriously, WTF?

I knew we were at a crossroads and what we did right then would signify how the rest of our parenting years would go; on one hand we could let the stress of the day win and go back home, sell our snowshoes and never try anything like that again.  On the other hand we could try to calm Rerun down, deal with Babboo’s litany of complaints and forge through with our plan to take our family snowshoeing.

The King and I decided, in that brief moment, that because this was how we had chosen to raise our kids we were going to have to deal with situations like this.  We couldn’t let the stress of this one day change our future as a family.

We took Rerun out of the backpack and made some adjustments.  He immediately quit crying and actually fell right to sleep.  Apparently he just hadn’t been comfortable before and that’s why he was crying.  I got Babboo’s gloves adjusted and we both practiced, a little more, at walking in our snowshoes (hey, it was my first time too).

We started out on the trail and the next thing I knew we were all laughing and having a wonderful time.  Babboo was doing a great job, Rerun was fast asleep and I was warm.  (My biggest complaint about stuff like this is I hate being cold.)  The King loved every minute of being able to do this with his family.

Here’s where our story should end.  But it doesn’t.  Unfortunately we pushed it a little too far.  Babboo got tired before we got to the end of the trail and he didn’t think he’d be able to keep going.  For every ten steps he took he wanted to sit down and take a break.  Sitting down with snowshoes on isn’t very easy.  The King was carrying Rerun and I wasn’t strong enough to carry Babboo with his snowshoes on.  Eventually we got back to our car and Babboo ate a granola bar and fell right asleep.  Between our decision to keep trying and Babboo’s breaking point it really had been the perfect day.  We had all had so much fun spending time together.

I can’t wait to do it again.  Only this time we won’t try to tackle such a long trail.