We’re traveling what seems to be all over the world for work. We’ve been in NYC for a week now, we’re off to the UK in five days, then to Key West two weeks later. The cats/fish/plants have been left under the tutelage of a friend, as has the house, and we’ve packed up the baby and all her diapers for her first international journey.
A lot of traveling, means a lot of flying, which is a lot of work with a 7 month old. She’s a good little Monkey, though. (Tip to new mothers: nurse the baby on take-off and landing.) But since we used up all of my hundreds of thousands of frequent flyer miles on American Airlines on a first class roundtrip ticket to New York back in June, we’ve happily switched over to Virgin (yay for Virgin now flying direct LA to NYC! – Not to mention direct NYC to London!) And thanks to their little TV sets on the back of everyone’s seat, I got to watch E! for the first time in months, and finally found out why the Kardashians are famous.
Boating in Central Park
On our first day here, we went for a looong walk in Central Park with my parents, and happened along the boathouse. We took a paddle; my father at the helm for most of it, while my mother happily conceded to the 4-person-maximum-on-a-boat rule on the dock. Poor Monkey was too small for even the smallest life-jacket, so it enveloped her like hot dog bun with straps.
We’re fortunate enough to be able to use both of our companies in this trip around the world. We shot wedding photos on Sunday at South Street Seaport, maternity photos on the Upper West Side on Tuesday, we’re shooting a promotional video of the World Parkinson Congress in Scotland the week of Sep 27, and we’re shooting video and still photography for two weddings in Key West.
Maternity Photos
Wedding at the Seaport
In one suitcase, I have packed my winter coat, my bathing suit, my short shorts, and a wool scarf. (Scotland and Key West don’t exactly share the same climate.) Monkey has a full suitcase all to herself. As she’s eating solid foods now, I’ve packed prunes, apricots, Cheerios, and her cereals. Like me, she also has her bathing suit and wooly sweater (for those cold days in the pool, of course.)
Jet lag for babies is another fun element to traveling with little ones. Her bedtime has gone from 7:30 in Los Angeles, to midnight in New York City. This just means that we stay up even later as parents desperate for a little Entourage-watching on HBO OnDemand (oooh, that Johnny Drama is always screwing up his own career!), and some quiet time to edit photos and work on our itinerary for the Scotland shoot.
Hooray for HBO OnDemand!
We all wake around 10am, like we’re back in our grumpy not-a-morning-person teenage days.
Unfortunately, we looked at our bank account this morning, and it turns out we’re sort of running on fumes here. We’re planning this world wind trip around the UK (London-Hungerford-Reading-Birmingham?-Wales(2 towns?)-Glasgow-Edinburgh-Aberdeen?-Oban?-Leeds?-London) and it looks like we’re doing it all on the old card. As mentioned in an earlier post, we bought that ad on TheKnot.com for our wedding photography, and after a whoooole three days, have yet to get an inquiry. So that’s $555/mo burning a hole in our future expenses…
But we’re optimistic. Surprisingly so. Things are on the up-and-up, and we feel good about what’s in store for our businesses. When we finally return to LA on Oct 18th, we’ll have 11 days of peace before getting back on a plane with the Monkey and going to Florida for two more weeks to shoot more weddings. And in April, it’s back to Florida for a whole month, and then we’ll see. Maybe we’ll have to relocate for a few months somewhere… maybe we’ll move permanently… point is, we’re just following wherever our career wants to take us. Anything to keep our little family together and fed.
And if all else fails, we’ll just keep flying around, and I’ll be forced to spend hours debating which sister is the best looking Kardashian.
EntrepreMother 