TRAVEL ORDERS

If you don’t already know about the show Mouk, keep reading.

In addition to being well done with catchy but not irritating tunes and whimsical imagery, it sends a great message: Meeting new people and learning about new cultures is interesting and worthwhile.

“Mouk and Chavapa are two globetrotters cycling around the world. From Ouagadougou to New York, from Australia to Madagascar and Greece, the two buddies discover the world and its inhabitants… And as everything’s different from home, adventure is always at the end of the road!”

I especially love that Mouk and Chavapa start each episode by talking via webcam with their friends and family back home — just like Flynn does every weekend.

As bizarre as our Foreign Service lifestyle seems at times — and as big as the sacrifices sometimes feel when there are little ones involved — it’s not really all that unusual to be living far from loved ones. With young people flocking to cities more and more, with increasing immigration, with the rise of international businesses, how many people these days actually live close to extended family? Almost no one.

Flynn’s generation may very well grow up thinking weekly Skype dates with grandparents are just as normal as the weekly corned beef Sunday brunches that I remember.

I’m 5’4″. Andy’s 5’8″. Flynn does not come from tall stock. Yet somehow our little guy has been consistently at the top of the growth charts for height.

Because he’s so tall he’s been easily escaping from him crib lately. The problem with this, for all of you without babies and toddlers (this is certainly not an issue I knew or cared about two years ago, believe me), is not that the little guy gets out of the crib and plays with his toys in the middle of the night. The problem is that in order to get out of the crib, he scales to the top of the crib railing, where he could potentially fall four feet or so to the ground in all kind of unfortunate contortions.

Yikes. What to do?

I understand there’s something called a crib tent that can help climby kids stay in the crib a bit longer. I’m sure that’s great, but I’m also sure they don’t sell them here. By the time one got to us we surely would have had either a better solution or a cracked skull.

I also understand that some parents put their climby kids in those sleep sack things so they can’t use their legs to leverage themselves up to the top of the railing. Brilliant move, parents. I commend your ingenuity. We seriously considered this option, but in the end I ruled it too cruel. I imagined Flynn fluttering around desperately like a bird with clipped wings.

So the only option left to us was to change his crib to a toddler bed, even though at 16 months he’s really much too young for this to go well, I’d imagine. But Andy switched the crib to a bed yesterday, and we rearranged his room and removed anything that could prove troublesome with Flynn wandering around at 3 a.m. Then, we braced ourselves.

The first night:

8:15 p.m. Put Flynn in bed. Set up a pile of pillows beneath the opening in the bed to cushion the fall if he rolls out. Because he climbs out of the bed every time I try to leave the room, I sit with him rubbing his back for 45 minutes until he falls asleep.

9:15 p.m. Hear crying. Run into Flynn’s room. He’s on the pile of pillows, still crying, tangled in his mosquito net. Move him back to bed. Add more pillows to the pile of pillows. Roll up a beach towel and set it up to hopefully act a de facto side rail to keep him from falling out. He’s back to sleep momentarily, thank God.

11 p.m. Andy goes downstairs to watch some sporting something or other airing overnight on AFN and assumes Flynn duty. All goes well.

2 a.m. Flynn is fine but I am still awake, anticipating him not being fine.

4 a.m. I finally fall asleep.

6:15 a.m. Flynn cries. I run to his room and he’s banging at the door to get out. I try to put him back to sleep. No luck. We’re up for the day.

In conclusion, Flynn did mostly okay. As for me, I’m tired.

Alex (while reading Us Weekly): Christina Applegate says her 18 month old recites the whole alphabet.

Andy: That Christina Applegate is a dirty liar.

Christina Applegate is probably not actually a liar, and that’s okay. With all due respect to her and everyone else’s parenting decisions, we’re going a different route. We’re not going to be the those parents who have our 1.5 year old memorize the alphabet or teach our 2.5 year old to read.

First of all, I learned to read with everyone else in my first grade class, and I turned out just fine. (Although I still do remember being mad at my mom for not teaching me at home, because the kids who already could read got to be in what seemed like a super special and elite reading group, darn them. But luckily I got over that.)

Second of all, come on, he’s a kid. I’d rather spend our moments together giggling at Abbey or blowing bubbles or walking along the shore. These are the sort of memories that I’m so glad to have from childhood, and I think one day he’ll be grateful for them too. Why make life serious and achievement driven before it has to be?

So if Flynn does happen to whip out the ABCs or learn to read before he starts school, don’t congratulate us. Credit most likely belongs to Mouk or The Hive or Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. Yes, we have also decided to be the sort of parents who let our toddler watch TV. Horror of horrors.

In the spirit of focusing on things that are good, I’d like to take a moment to reflect on our great luck to live just exactly where we do, a short one minute walk to the beach. We have an unobstructed view of the ocean from Flynn’s bedroom window. While we change his diaper he points out the boats and birds. Flynn’s nanny Marie takes him to the beach every day to dig in the sand and then chase the other neighborhood kids who are there with their nannies. Sometimes on the weekends he’ll grab his bucket and pail and stand waiting at the gate until we open it, and then he’ll lead us down the road to the beach himself. It’s a straight shot. He knows the way.

On Saturday we were feeling a little too tired to really do much of anything, but while Andy took a nap, Flynn, Abbey and I headed down to the beach to watch a storm roll in. Flynn tried to bury Abbey in sand and Abbey tried to escape. We dug holes and put sand in buckets and pointed at the crashing waves and faraway boats as the trickle of rain grew and grew and grew.  We saw giant horses and tiny crabs. We waved bye bye to airplanes flying overhead and people walking past. And then, soaking wet, we finally picked up our bucket and shovel and walked the minute back home.

I don’t imagine there are many places we could be living in the U.S. with somewhere so interesting just a minute’s walk away.