Lesson Learned

Yesterday I tried to take a walk with the baby. It started out well enough.

She had just fallen asleep and through the whole process of putting her in the car seat, the car seat in the car, putting the stroller in the car it was all good. I drove to the nearest park that the bike path runs by and got the stroller situated with my camera in the bottom basket. The car seat snaps into the stroller and all this was carried out without a hitch. Away we went.

My plan was to walk one mile, turn around and walk another mile back. This is easy to determine because the trail is marked at every mile with a sign that indicates the distance in miles to Enos Lane (the western most end of the trail), a blue hash mark on the side to indicate each half mile, and a white hash mark to indicate each tenth mile (I think, or each fifth, I can't remember now).

As we struck out headed east with the baby sleeping nicely, I was hoping maybe I'd see some of the beaver damaged trees that had been in our news recently. There was quite an uproar from the community because the beaver(s) had felled about 10 trees along the trail and the city was saying it was going to cost $5,000 to replace them. (Not sure how they came up with that figure unless they are factoring the salaries of workers to replace the trees, the cost of their health, dental, and vision, sick leave, vacation benefits, the cost of the vehicles they had to drive including gas and insurance, etc.) For some unknown reason instead of calling the city animal control they contacted a state official who declared the beaver must die. After the general populace heard that and started voicing their complaints the beaver was given a reprieve and the latest I heard is that the beaver will be relocated to a mountainous area.

We did find the area and one or two felled trees. It looks like the other trees were replaced already and some sort of preventative measures were taken against a recurrence of the heinous act. The other trees were wrapped with orange construction fence. I'm sure the orange will let the beaver know "danger: stay away!"

I had just arrived at the one mile point and turned around when Baby S started stirring. I walked a little faster and gave the stroller a little extra sideways motion to try and help her fall back asleep. She was having none of that.

I picked her up out of the stroller and had her up against my shoulder to try and sooth her that way. I just got deaf in that ear. Do you know how hard it is to hold a screaming, squirming infant while pushing a stroller?

I alternated between trying to hold her and push the stroller and putting her back in and just letting her have at it. I couldn't find her binky and I couldn't stand the latter too much so ended up carrying her most of the way back to the car. Boy was I GLAD when I got back to the parking lot! She didn't stop crying until we had left the parking lot.

For the time being I think I'll keep our walks a little closer to home, even if it means walking around the same block several times in a row. Lesson learned!

Meanwhile here are a few more pleasant photos.

I love a sleeping baby! I used some of my "hair product" to try and give her a baby mohawk but she doesn't really have a lot of hair.

She's starting to smile more (when she's not screaming). Babies have the cutest grins.

"Don't worry, Gramma, everything's going to be A-OK!"