Fasten Your Seatbelts! June 1 - 20, 2004 Grandmother arrives; we're going camping; I have a day of social life; motherhood dementia prevails.

	Granny prophesied Tom's teeth already a month ago. To make her happy, he let them stick out just one day before her arrival.

The greatest event of the earlier half of June was doubtlessly the arrival of Tom's grandmother. I was unabashedly looking forward to having finally some more free time. The older Tom gets, the less he sleeps during the day, and the more attention he requires. He either whimpers and does not want to play alone -- or he becomes very quiet and plays very nicely -- which usually means that he has just discovered some very interesting new toy like an electric cord, a glass bottle, a power outlet, an important paper document, a dead spider, a sharp screwdriver, a remote control... I had simply developed these half-minute spasms, urging me to drop whatever I do and go check on my baby. Now try to accomplish this way anything -- try writing a journal, sorting laundry into a new cabinet, wipe the floor, iron... I therefore live in a constant stress, feeling guilty -- when I get to the aforementioned floor, it should have been done a week ago, but that makes me indefinitely postpone today's ironing. I have been attempting not to lose track -- I don't even think about catching up or getting ahead of my "five-year plan".

	Tom enjoys camping (and sorting out things) at Stanislaus National Forest

A baby monitor helps a bit. I manage every other day to jump for ten minutes into our pool at times when Tom's asleep. I learned to shorten the process of getting into the water into a split-second -- nevertheless Tom wakes up in at least half the cases just in the moment I hit the water. I can also close the door to Tom's room and proceed with noisier chores around the house (re-stocking dishes, mixing of Tommy's mash, sweeping) without a constant fear of being discovered and subsequently subjected to a squealing penalty.

When our grandmother finally arrived, a rather hectic week ensued -- instead of taking in easy with my feet up on my desk (as I was picturing it), I ended up tidying up our household. Granny helped with weeding out our whole back yard, there was freshly washed laundry appearing in boxes, all ironed and folded up. Well, I hope that granny would stay longer, to let me - perhaps finally - enjoy this maternal leave.

	Waiting for sunset

I have no idea whether Tommy had looked forward to see granny again -- I reckon there is no way how to explain to a half-year old that his mother's mother is about to come visiting; still he dealt with her arrival quite well. He quickly understood that she is the only family member intelligent enough to correctly interpret his little arms raised and his doggie looks as "pick me up right away and amuse me", unlike our "just finish eating that lunch" or "keep on ironing; I can wait another piece of laundry". Obviously Tom grows up to be a very clever boy indeed. He re-applied his begging look at a toy store with excellent results, immediately becoming a proud owner of a plastic flexible bug. To his (and grandmother's) honor one has to say that this bug became (besides empty carton boxes and discarded glossy magazines) one of our most successful toys.

	Get up, daddy! Tents don't come with blinds, which could deceit our early bird baby.

Since mid-May we had planned camping out in our favorite Stanislaus National Forest, but weather forecasts for all higher elevations kept insisting on lows in low forties (°F), until the second July weekend. Weather promised to be more merciful to tiny babies, and so we packed our granny, tents, sleeping bags, and about thousand more pieces of Tommy's stuff, and drove out. We passed an intelligence test (erecting a new tent, where for a while we seemed to have some leftover poles), ate at our favorite Morenita (we even managed to contain Tom who soiled his diaper from all the watching us eat), and in the end the only remaining challenge was putting our kid to bed. Bats swooshed around, a deer walked past us across a meadow, a very romantic evening. So at night Tommy had decided that it was no fun sleeping in a designated place between his parents, and rolled around until he buried his face into Sid's belly -- being thus in the best position to kick my stomach or kidneys, respectively (depending on the side I slept on at the moment). At six a.m. he was very perky and merry, which could not be said about his parents. Granny came to our rescue, for she had slept in her separate tent without the benefit of our little baby; we could thus recover some of our nightly deficit.

	Kennedy Meadows offer spots where one can spend a quiet afternoon with a small child

It's natural that Tom eventually fell asleep, so at half past nine, when we all finished eating breakfast, changing clothes and were ready to go, Tom was stiff as an old baguette. We stopped limiting ourselves acoustically and our racket woke our sleeping beauty. Leaving tents behind, we drove over to our favorite Kennedy Meadows. Granny had not been there before, and we considered it suitable for a small hike with a baby, which could be easily terminated early on a blanket in a meadow or under a tree. After a few initial yards granny declared our advance too slow (Hippo loaded with about 24 lbs -- Tom, his carrier, a tent piece to put on the ground, Tom's food and other items; I packed my maternal fat and cameras). She hurried up the hill towards Relief Reservoir (some thousand feet higher). The rest of us dragged on along the same horse trail all the way up to the second bridge. We would have carried on, but Tom whimpered -- he wanted to sleep and did not want to ride on his dad's back anymore. So we signaled for retreat; our junior fell asleep anyway on the way downhill, but when we tried to disentangle him from the carrier and put him down on the first suitable (= flat) spot, he miraculously came to life. He guzzled all his milk, ate all his canned food, and overall became quite agile. So Hippo got saddled again and we finished the last stretch back to Kennedy Meadows. Tom snoozed off, being rocked on the back of the Hippo, and this time, being left alone in the carrier (which can stand upright all by itself), he dozed right through our late lunch, next to our restaurant table.

	Kennedy Meadows is a "pack station" - they will rent you a horse, pack your food, and you can ride out into the wilderness on four extra legs.

By four thirty, granny hurried in, immediately complaining that such an early return time deprived her from having sufficiently explored a beautiful mountain lake in the middle of a wilderness (this part of Sierra has such official status -- it's technically a no-man's-land, not serviced by rescue crews, firemen nor other benefits of civilization, not to mention roads, stores or telephones, including cellular ones). Having reacquired our grandmother, nothing prevented us from returning to our campsite and properly packing all our stuff. Overall one could say that our trip went well -- Tom passed his test night in a tent (we fared slightly worse, but could not help it), and mountains did not seem to instigate any fear in him, or affect his appetite, and we pronounced him again a traveling baby. We can boldly plan more outdoor weekends or holidays.

	Some ride into the wilderness on the back of a horse, some use a Hippo...

On the following weekend we decided to get cultured. Having left granny in Tom's clutches at Kren's in Monterey, we had a lunch, just the two of us, and went to see a movie. By the time I was through about half of my lunch, I felt an urge to pull out some toys (as is my usual custom when Tom becomes bored from watching us eat). Then we went to see Harry Potter. Already during the commercial slides, I was nervous like a sleigh in summer. I had an urgent feeling that before the actual feature, I must do SOMETHING TERRIBLY IMPORTANT. It took me a while to figure out what it was supposed to be. During last one and half year, I had not visited a cinema; the only movies (perhaps eight, perhaps ten) I watched in public, were shown aboard an aircraft. And so then, sitting again in rows and rows of people, I felt the need to STRAP DOWN.

	Mountain journey taxes one's strength...

I would like to use this place to discuss motherhood dementia again. This event at a theater has not been an exception. About a week before I drove off for shopping, but wearing no shoes. I walk barefoot at home, even into our garage, I drive barefoot, and take leather slippers with me in the car. Unfortunately that day we switched cars with Sid and my shoes were in the other one. Luckily, it was an all-out assault and I could borrow shoes from my mother. My next story is about my mashing of carrots for Tom. For once I just could not muster it with my hand mixer, and I pulled out a larger cuisinart, but even it did not puree the carrots as needed for little babies. Well, Tom devoured the carrots with the small pieces, not a problem. Only after about two days, when I was being very smart while advising one of my virtual friends about baby food, my own sentence hit me square in my forehead: "you have to boil the carrots, otherwise it won't mix well." Yes, you're right -- I demonstrated more strength and endurance than wisdom and coherence while preparing a mash for Tom -- I mixed it raw!!! Dementia is going to be my middle name.

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