Interview Review
So a couple weeks ago, Nick, Hannah and I spent 10 days driving around Oregon, where he had four interviews. I know- 10 days, 800 miles, 4 cities, 5 hotels, 4 interviews, 1 five-month-old. Sounds like a dream, doesn't it?
Hannah actually did pretty well. Ok, she blew out a diaper and her outfit when we were with a realtor in Medford and ended up riding ghetto-style in her car seat with just a diaper on; she blew out another diaper so badly while the wife of one of the docs was showing me around Ashland that she offered to let us use her washing machine when we came over for dinner; there were definitely a few hours of "I'm not hungry, I'm not dirty, I'm just tired of this car seat" crying; but on the whole, she adapted to our ever-changing situations like a champ.
I had read bad (probably overly-paranoid) things about hotel baby cribs, so we packed along the Eddie Bauer Travel Bed, or as we called it, "The Box." (As in: "Time for your box, Hannah!") It's a foldout nylon contraption that's 30 inches long, 15 inches wide and has about 8-inch sides. Hannah is somewhere around 25 inches, so she fit...barely. The first night we put her in it, she was still a little bit awake when she went down. We heard the scritch, scritch, scritch of her fingernails on the nylon fabric, then looked over to see a hand feeling along the top of The Box. Sorry kiddo, we didn't get the model with an escape hatch.
So by day 10, we were physically and mentally done. As good of a job as Hannah did, sharing a hotel room with a baby is not exactly relaxing. Add in all the driving and Nick's stress of having to do four day-long interviews and we were ready to go home. Unfortunately, he still had one more interview to do on his last day, in Salem, which we had decided we weren't so crazy about. Even more unfortunately, they wanted Hannah and I to come to dinner at the end of the day. "It's fine, we all have kids," they said.
Yes, but their kids are in their teens by now, and whoever was making the reservation forgot the difference between children who can be reasoned with...and babies. We showed up at a very nice, very tiny restaurant. Like maybe seats 30 people. With a live piano player. Dinner at 6; oh wait, 6 is also Hannah's normal bedtime. Deeeelightful. Did I mention that when Hannah gets tired, she doesn't cry or fall asleep? Oh no, she screeches. Like a screech owl. Or a cat whose tail has had an encounter with a rocking chair. Picture a Friday night date night, piano music softly playing...and a baby screeching. Intermittently for 2 1/2 hours. I couldn't even take her into the bathroom because the very nice restaurant apparently used to be some kind of drive-through fast food establishment and the bathrooms were outside, a la 1980 gas station style. And on top of that, we had to feign enthusiasm for Salem, when all we wanted to do was take the screecher home and put her back in The Box.
Hannah actually did pretty well. Ok, she blew out a diaper and her outfit when we were with a realtor in Medford and ended up riding ghetto-style in her car seat with just a diaper on; she blew out another diaper so badly while the wife of one of the docs was showing me around Ashland that she offered to let us use her washing machine when we came over for dinner; there were definitely a few hours of "I'm not hungry, I'm not dirty, I'm just tired of this car seat" crying; but on the whole, she adapted to our ever-changing situations like a champ.
I had read bad (probably overly-paranoid) things about hotel baby cribs, so we packed along the Eddie Bauer Travel Bed, or as we called it, "The Box." (As in: "Time for your box, Hannah!") It's a foldout nylon contraption that's 30 inches long, 15 inches wide and has about 8-inch sides. Hannah is somewhere around 25 inches, so she fit...barely. The first night we put her in it, she was still a little bit awake when she went down. We heard the scritch, scritch, scritch of her fingernails on the nylon fabric, then looked over to see a hand feeling along the top of The Box. Sorry kiddo, we didn't get the model with an escape hatch.
So by day 10, we were physically and mentally done. As good of a job as Hannah did, sharing a hotel room with a baby is not exactly relaxing. Add in all the driving and Nick's stress of having to do four day-long interviews and we were ready to go home. Unfortunately, he still had one more interview to do on his last day, in Salem, which we had decided we weren't so crazy about. Even more unfortunately, they wanted Hannah and I to come to dinner at the end of the day. "It's fine, we all have kids," they said.
Yes, but their kids are in their teens by now, and whoever was making the reservation forgot the difference between children who can be reasoned with...and babies. We showed up at a very nice, very tiny restaurant. Like maybe seats 30 people. With a live piano player. Dinner at 6; oh wait, 6 is also Hannah's normal bedtime. Deeeelightful. Did I mention that when Hannah gets tired, she doesn't cry or fall asleep? Oh no, she screeches. Like a screech owl. Or a cat whose tail has had an encounter with a rocking chair. Picture a Friday night date night, piano music softly playing...and a baby screeching. Intermittently for 2 1/2 hours. I couldn't even take her into the bathroom because the very nice restaurant apparently used to be some kind of drive-through fast food establishment and the bathrooms were outside, a la 1980 gas station style. And on top of that, we had to feign enthusiasm for Salem, when all we wanted to do was take the screecher home and put her back in The Box.
posted by Katie | 9:01 AM
1 Comments:
Oregon!!!! I am so jealous, even if you were in the crappy parts of Oregon!
Krista
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