When I had to go to New Jersey for my work meeting yesterday, I originally planned to do an early morning workout, drop off Kaia at school, then head to Penn Station to take NJ Transit to Morristown. This way, Chris could do pickup at the end of the day. Of course, this plan got thwarted when Chris rescheduled plans for mid-afternoon drinks with his friend, who has a flexible work schedule, and he pleaded with me to let him do drop off that day and for me to do pickup straight from Penn Station. Originally, I was annoyed with this given that he sees this friend almost every week for drinks (it sounded pretty desperate, as though this was the one thing that gave his weekly life meaning), but I figured I’d just relent and and pick my battles, and this wasn’t really one of them. He then said that since he knew I was traveling that I could just use the transit card to take the subway down to Chinatown, and then get a work-paid Uber back home with Kaia. I asked him to pack the ride-safe seat belt for her in her backpack for our car ride.
I got back from my workout yesterday morning to find out that somehow, Chris had forgotten to take Kaia to school with her backpack (he said she was being fussy when they left the house). So he packed the ride-safe belt in my work bag… for me to take to New Jersey and then down to Manhattan Chinatown. I was not happy about this, as I wanted to put my purse into my work bag to consolidate my items, and now that bag would be too full; I was just going to Morristown for the afternoon and didn’t want to seem like I was taking the whole world with me. First, I change my planned schedule revolving around work to accommodate his rescheduled beers catch up with a friend. Then, he forgets to bring the one thing she takes to school…
Chris said that since we rarely take a car that it would be a novelty for Kaia to take a car home from lower Manhattan, and she would enjoy it. So when I picked her up at school, she was excited to see me (she didn’t quite understand that when I said I’d go to Jersey for work for the day that I’d be back at the end of the day; she usually associates my work travel with nights away from her). And she was even eager to put on her ride-safe seat belt. She happily climbed into the car. For a moment, I thought… okay, this ride will be fun. But as soon as I tried to buckle her toddler seat belt to the regular car seat belt, she had a total melt down, screaming, crying, kicking, and somehow managed to get down on the backseat car floor, still attached to the car seat belt. Kaia eventually calmed down when I told her that Suma and Topa would be coming back very soon and would see her when we got home. She eventually passed out and ending up sleeping for almost half an hour. We were in the car for over 50 minutes, stuck in traffic.
Things rarely go how you envision they will with toddlers. But I guess it’s always safe to say that you should never expect anything with toddlers and just take things as they come, and try to enjoy them as best as possible since these moments will fly by so quickly, you won’t even know what hit you. She looked so cute in her ride safe belt, and it was really adorable how she so effortlessly slipped her arms into the straps and allowed me to velcro and loop things together.