Airline Approved Carseats! HUH?

Our flight home was much smoother than the flight getting to Florida. We made it to the airport without much distress. The flight was half empty so I asked if it would be okay to bring the carseat on the plane for Anthony. Sure no problem. When we got on the plane the flight attendant stopped us to look for a red sticker on the carseat that states it is an FAA approved carseat. She couldn't find it so we were not allowed to use it on the plane. You have got to be kidding me! It is a Peg Perego carseat that cost $200, your telling me it's not airline approved? I didn't really care that much, I figured I'd be holding him on my lap anyway, but I was just annoyed by the airlines lack of consistency (we were allowed to use it on the flight to FL). Then this morning I did a little online searching for any information on it and I found THIS.
Now I'm thinking I should have insisted on using the car seat. Something should be better than nothing right? Apparently not according to AirTran.
Then I decided to call Peg Perego and ask them if the carseat I had was FAA approved and if so, why didn't it have the red sticker on it. They claim all USA authorized distributors will have the sticker on it and the online store I bought my carseat from apparently is not an authorized distributor and my carseat may not have been made for USA resale but for another country. Hmmm, I wonder if that's why I got such a good deal on it? So I decided to call the online store I bought the carseat from and see what they say about it.
They say someone will call me monday. I guess I'll wait and see.

We told Anthony he had to sit in the seat like a big boy and wear his seat belt.

Sun, Snow, Treadmills, and Pad Thai

SUN(SET)

The sunset on our last night in Naples

SNOWOur house the day we left for Florida, I suspect it will look the same when we get home.

TREADMILL

The hotel we are at has the coolest treadmills ever, I promise if I had one of these at home I would use it everyday.* It has a built in TV on the monitor and you can plug your headphones into it to listen to the TV or you can connect your ipod to it. It also has three buttons below the TV screen that say walk/jog/run and you can set them to whatever speed you like then during your workout you can switch back and forth between speeds with the touch of a button. Perfect for the c25k interval training. It has some other very cool features, but those are the two that make me want to buy one. So yes, this means I got all 3 runs in for the week.

*I am safe making this promise because I know I will never convince Todd to buy me one. The home version cost $7,999.

PAD THAI

We are having Thai food for the 3rd time on this trip, I think it is my favorite food. There isn't a Thai restaraunt anywhere near where we live, so I am getting as much of it on this trip as I can talk Todd into. Plus it makes good take out which we seem to be doing a lot of on this trip.

A day at the beach

We went to the beach for the better part of the day today. Anthony tolerated it pretty well for the morning and then Todd and I took turns sitting in the room with him while he napped the rest of the day. It hit 82 degrees here today, but the breeze off the ocean made it quite comfortable, I think we may actually come home with a tan. There was another family here that had a new baby (born 2 days before Anthony) and they just happen to plop their beach chairs next to ours and the mom was a talker. So she and I talked a lot about our babies, and I have to admit, I am a bit jealous of her. Her baby was so good, (Anthony was good too, but her baby was really good) they had her outside from 10am till 3:30pm and she never fussed once that I saw, and actually slept a lot too. She then told me that she has her baby on a 4 hour eating schedule. 7am, 11am, 3pm, 7pm and then to bed for the night. I don't even know how many times a day Anthony eats, but it's way more than that. His daily routine doesn't qualify as a schedule since it is always changing. I never know when he will want to eat, sometimes its in 2 hours, sometimes 3 1/2 hours, he is very unpredictable. He is also very intolerable to being hungry, when he wants to eat he wants to eat NOW! (I think he gets that from me) and don't even think about trying to put him off. Yesterday on the way to Naples (a 2 hour drive) he decided it was time to eat about 10 minutes before we got to our hotel, so we had to stop and I fed him in the car in the parking lot of a grocery store. (Right after I changed his diaper in the car on my lap and he peed all over me and him.) And speaking of dirty diapers, he poops even more than he eats. When we left for this vacation I packed 40 diapers, we ran out rather quickly and had to buy another 40 pack and now it is gone too. So in 6 days he went through 80 diapers. I feel like he's gone back to peeing and pooping like he did at weeks 2 and 3. I'm starting to wonder if that Rotavirus vaccine he got at his 2 month check up has anything to do with it.

Here is a few pictures from our vacation thus far.

Renter Update

In case your wondering, our renter is going out of town this morning. What a shock!
I guess we could still drive down there and check the construction progress out, but with a trusty next door neighbor who can take a few pictures for us, we have decided to not waste a vacation day driving down there.

C25K Check In

This afternoon I was Reading Rachaels C25K progress report, and I suddenly felt really guilty. I had sort of forgotten about the whole C25K plan. Week one went down smoothly, I even got an extra day in of running in addition to the mandatory 3 days. Week 2, well, not so good, I only got one day of running in, and I skipped the 5 minute warm up because I was late meeting Rachael at the Y. Somehow the week got away from me and I never logged another run that week. But I promised myself that week 3 would be better, I was hardly working and it should be rather easy. Then I unexpectedly got a few shifts at work and then my friend came to visit me from WA, and week 3 passed me by without a single run. I promised that week 4 would be better because I would be on vacation in FL, and it's warm, and I can run outside if need be. With all good intentions I packed my running shoes and exactly enough clothes to workout 3 times. Then I got here, and, well, I'm on vacation, so I considered skipping the whole week, since I was behind anyway and just get back on track when I get home. And then I read Rachael's blog today and realized that I am very good at making excuses when it comes to exercise, so before I even finished reading her post, I put on my running clothes and gathered up Anthony and the bouncer seat (Todd was at the pool) and up to the hotel gym I went. First I took a quick peek at the week 4 schedule and WOW, you miss 2 weeks you miss a lot. Week 1 had 90 second intervals of running, and week 4 has me running 5 minute intervals. I refuse to start over, so I pushed myself to keep up with the schedule and no I think it is safe to say, I am back on track. Just need to fit 2 more runs in this week before I go home. Easy Right?
Now I am going to go check in on a few other C25K participants and see if I am the only slacker.

Renter trouble

The lease is just about up on our condo in Ft. Lauderdale and our tenant has agreed to resign for another year, but only if we lower the rent significantly. She wanted it dropped $500 per month, we agreed to drop it $300 a month. They are doing some construction and remodeling to the building so there is some inconveniences she is and has been living with for the past 6 months. She told me the construction could go on for another 6 months or more. I agreed that it would only be fair to lower the rent temporarily. Then we get a call from the neighbors of the FL condo who tell us the construction is almost done, maybe only another 4 weeks. So then I have to wonder, is our tenant trying to deceive us?

Lucky for her, or maybe not, we are in Florida and only a 2 hour drive from the condo. So guess what? We are going to take a little drive and check things out for ourselves before we agree to sign a new lease with her for $300 less per month. I called her yesterday to see if she would be around, that we were in town and would like to come by and see the construction progress and then she could sign the new lease agreement. She said she was leaving town on Tuesday so we said we would come on Monday. She then tells me, maybe she will leave on Monday. She will have to check and get back with me. Sure sounds to me like she doesn't want us to come by and see that the construction really is almost done.



By the way, we figured out a way to get some sun with a baby. The hotel has these handy little half tents you can rent for the day and it blocks the sun and wind. It worked really well for about an hour and a half. Normally I would say it was a waste of $15, but an hour and a half in the sun was definitely worth it. The rest of the day it rained so we stayed inside.

Questions and Answers

Question: How many bouncer seats does one baby need?
Answer: 4 - one for upstairs, one for downstairs, one for grandmas and one for vacation in Florida.
(We tried to pack the one from home but ran out of room in our suitcase so decided to try and survive a week without it. After one day without it we decided we really needed one.)

Question: How does Anthony like the warm weather?
Answer: Were not really sure, but we think it makes him a bit grouchy.

Question: How did Anthony do on the plane?
Answer: Surprisingly well.

Sleeping on Todd's lap on the plane.

Question: Why am I blogging on vacation?

Answer: Because taking a 10 week old baby on vacation isn't much different than staying at home. Luckily we have a great hotel room with a great view of the ocean, because I am afraid we will be spending most of our time in the room with him and will likely come home as pale as we were when we left.