The decline in posting last week was due, in part, to the pending URL switch (which is becoming even more troublesome than it seemed at first glance). The other, more considerable factor was a heavy case of pre-travel anxiety.

Whether the trip is into Manhattan for an afternoon or across the country for a weekend, I always get nervous before we travel away from home. Weeks before our departure, I’m mentally packing, figuring out what we need more of before we leave (and then inevitably bringing too much of something), deciding how it’s all going to fit into bags, which bags we’re going to bring, and so on. To say I stress myself out is an understatement. Still, I wouldn’t have us not go anywhere. The more we travel, the more confident I am. And this last trip certainly presented its share of challenges.  So where did we go?

Canada!

For some reason I’ve wanted to go to Canada for years. Whenever Canada came up in conversation I’d tell John, “I love Canada,” despite never having been there. This year, John told me at my birthday that we were going to make my dream come true, and so we just returned from a long weekend in Montreal.

I love being in bilingual places. And apparently I have a very convincing “bonjour” because lots of people responded in French and then switched to English for us like it was nothing. The only person who seemed embarrassed by assuming we spoke French was the woman who cooed over Jacob for a good two minutes, rubbing his back and everything, before realizing that John and I were giggling because we had no idea what she was saying. She later told us to be extra careful with Jacob, because he’s so cute he might get kidnapped. Um . . . thanks? We laughed a lot that breakfast . . .

We spent most of our time in the old part of the city. I love that village-y atmosphere, but we did manage to get on the subway and see some of the more distant stretches of the city as well. More on that later.

When we planned the trip, we knew that traveling with a toddler would be challenging. We considered going just the two of us, but quickly realized I’m just not ready to be so far away from our little man for so long. Making that decision was the first instance of lost sleep.

Although Jacob napped surprisingly well while we were away, his nighttime sleep was not what it is at home. We were up every night for about two hours.  When we got back home last night, it seemed as if we are going to have to relearn this whole sleep-through-the-night thing. Here’s hoping tonight goes better! This little development is a bummer, for sure, but either he came with us and I didn’t sleep or he stayed home and I didn’t sleep. And with the former, we ended up with pictures like this:

So I’d consider that a win.