It might not come as a surprise to anyone noticing the total lack of posting on the blog that January sort of ran all over me and got mostly out the door before I could collect any thoughts about it. I knew it was going to be this way, but still, here I sit on January 25, shocked that the month is almost over. I really can't even begin to cover everything that we've done this month, but I'll tell you about the highlights, tell a funny airport story and then later post some super-cute baby photos of my nephew Clark so that you don't notice, OK?

When we decided we would not be traveling to see family for Christmas this year, we instead scheduled trips to see both sides of the family in January. That allowed us to work in one good visit with each side before the baby comes in April. April, incidentally, is starting to seem alarmingly close now that it is within the calendar year we currently inhabit. But that's another post. My point about January is that for 18 of the last 26 or so days, Kate and I have been out of town. When we saw Dan's family in San Antonio, Dan was with us, and then when we flew to Mississippi to see my family, we traveled on our own.

For anyone counting, I am 27 weeks pregnant right now. During this trip I took with Kate to Mississippi, I apparently passed over that threshold of looking pregnant enough that total strangers started asking me when I am due. It was weird, because on the way to Mississippi, not a single person asked about the baby. Ten days later, on the return trip, I bet I told 15 people that I'm due in April, that it's a boy, etc. I blame sweet tea and that chocolate cake my mom made for my 30th birthday, which I celebrated while we were in Mississippi.

I might be 30 now, but I felt about 65 by the end of the days when I traveled by myself with Kate. Traveling alone with a toddler is a very physical process that involves a lot of bending down, picking up and twisting around in an impossibly small airline seat to pick up dropped crayons. It turns out that having a waist capable of bending and a functional center of gravity is also an advantage in that situation, and let me tell you, I no longer have either of those. So I am relieved that this was the last airplane trip we're scheduled to make while I'm pregnant. All told, it went pretty well, with one massive exception, which I now refer to in my mind as The Chicago Incident.

Usually when we fly to Jackson, we're routed through Houston. Hobby is not the nicest airport in the world, but having spent countless hours there over the course of eight years of connecting flights home, I have gotten really familiar with it, and when you have a kid in tow, there's something to be said for the familiar. When we went to book this trip, we were taking advantage of a very very good fare sale that Southwest did in the fall, and in the process of trying to get the best possible price, it became apparent that I would have to fly though Chicago Midway airport on at least one leg of the trip. This added a pretty good chunk of flight time to the day, which wasn't great, but I was actually the most annoyed at the prospect of a layover at Midway. I haven't been there in years, but my enduring memory of that airport is of claustrophobia-inducing low ceilings, inadequate seating in gate areas and very little in the way of food options in terminals. It turns out not much has changed in the four or five years since I was there last, with one notable exception: Moving walkways that take up 80 percent of the already narrow hallways between gates.

Those might have been there for years, but I at least had forgotten about them, probably because in my pre-kid life there wasn't any reason to look at those things as a tool of Satan. But now I loathe them, and here's why. Kate loves the moving walkways like they are some kind of fair ride. When Dan is with me, we just take turns riding up and down the moving walkway and everyone is happy. When she and I are traveling alone, however, this sets up a bad situation. For safety reasons, you're not allowed to take strollers on the walkways. I can't leave my stroller and all our gear behind to escort Kate up and down the moving walkway, but I also can't let her get on there alone. So I have to tell her we can't go on the walkways at all, and much weeping and gnashing of teeth ensues.

This scenario kicked in approximately one minute after we deplaned in Chicago, so things were already not going well when I decided that the first thing we needed to get done was a bathroom stop. In Chicago, they do have a family bathroom, which is one of the greatest innovations in recent travel history as far as I am concerned, since it gives you a little more space and privacy when you're traveling with kids. However, if you only have one family bathroom for an entire terminal, as Chicago Midway apparently feels is adequate, it is pretty much always occupied. So after a while I gave up and we went into the main ladies' restroom. This is where I discovered the following series of true facts: First, sometime during the plane trip, Kate's diaper had sprung a leak of massive proportions and the back of her pants were soaked. Second, it had clearly been wet long enough for her to slide her wet pants around on the plane seat and pick up a nice layer of airline grime that was now coloring the pink pants a disturbing shade of gray. So now we've got wet, filthy pants. (And no, I don't know how I failed to notice that this had happened when we were on the plane. So that one's on me. But I don't want to even think about what is on those seats. Yuck.) Third true fact: For the first and only time in our two-year history of flying with Kate, which has encompassed dozens of flights, I failed to pack a change of clothes. I want you to know that I have faithfully packed that change of clothes every other time and never ONCE have I needed them. But on the one day when it really mattered, did I have any extra pants for her? No I did not. Total Mommy Failure. And don't think she didn't notice, either. When I took the wet pants off her, she immediately started going "I not need pants, Mommy. No more pants! No pants!" thus casting her vote for not putting the wet pants back on, and I don't blame her. But it was 15 degrees in Chicago that day. Warmer in the airport, obviously, but not run-around-with-no-pants warm. There is really no way to let your kid strip down half-naked in that situation without looking like a delinquent.

I love how in parenting, you are inevitably confronted with this kind of complex problem-solving situation when you are in public and surrounded by so much chaos you can't even think straight. There were other travelers milling around and bumping into us left and right, incredibly loud announcements were blaring out of the PA system non-stop, and Kate was continuing to lobby for her no-pants policy loudly, while kicking her legs on that useless fold-out changing table. My first thought was that if there was a hand-dryer in the bathroom, I could dry the pants and we might be saved. But no. In the year 2010, surrounded by all manner of public campaigns to stop overflowing the landfills of the world, the Chicago Midway airport has chosen to go with only paper towels in their restrooms. And not nice paper towels either. Those brown ones that have all the absorbency of cardboard and fall apart. Fantastic. So under pressure, I draped Kate's pants over the back of our stroller, strapped her in, used her jacket to cover her legs and told her that she was going to have to stay in her stroller until her pants dried. I tried to make this sound fun. Like "Hey, you get to pretend that your jacket is a pair of pants! Won't that be a fun game?"

I'm going to let you take a moment to laugh at the very idea that that worked. Go ahead. It's OK. And just like you thought, she was happy to stay in that stroller for about the next five minutes. During the span of time I managed to grab us lunch at the McDonald's that was one of my two choices for food in that awful terminal, and tried to find us a relatively quiet corner to eat in, but it didn't matter. We were still seated next to three or four business travelers when Kate ran out of patience for pretending to be an old lady with an afghan draped over her knees, got up with a French fry clutched in each hand and started running back and forth in tight little loops, squealing and wearing a top, a diaper, no pants and her tennis shoes. Meanwhile I sat there and tried to be a good sport as passing travelers laughed at Kate's glee and my obvious chagrin over the situation.

On the upside, her pants did dry during the course of the layover. Also, at some point, the powers that be cranked the heat in the airport up so daggum high that she was probably more comfortable with no pants on than anyone else had the option of being. I wish I could say that this was the only travel crisis we had, but that would be historical revisionism. It would ignore the time we had to prop Kate up on her training potty, which was balanced on the front seat of my Mom's Suburban, which was parked on the side of the highway in Gluckstadt Mississippi, where it turns out that one exit has lots of rest stops, but the other one has NONE. It would fail to take into account that Kate's car seat got lost somewhere between Albuquerque and Jackson. And people, these were things that happened during what I would classify as a relatively smooth trip with a toddler. No wonder I can't even think about learning to do this with two kids without breaking into a sweat.

The good news is that we had a wonderful time with all our family, and I'll post more about that soon. For now I am going to let Kate watch an absurd amount of Sesame Street while I unpack our suitcases. I figure after the pants fiasco, my shot at Mother of the Year for 2010 is pretty much over anyway. Big surprise.