On Thursday I'm taking Zoe back to her 'home country', the US, for the first time since we moved to Stockholm a year and a half ago. I have been back plenty times but only on short business trips. This time we are doing a tour of friends/colleagues and finally attending one of my main conferences where I have a paper. We will be gone two weeks. Zoe's dad is going to the conference too so I hope we can distribute the child-care between us and not end up like at the second conference I took Zoe to when she was one year old.
I have started preparing Zoe by talking about what she wants to bring; so far she wants to bring her 'big baby' and the baby's stroller. I just bought an iPad mini which I'm loading up with games and videos for the airplane ride. When we talked about the airport security yesterday I realized one thing: we will be sent through the 'old fashioned' x-ray portal rather than the futuristic body scanner that most people go through and I doubt that they will "touch" Zoe. When I explained her all this she was very disappointed. "Zoe wanna touch. Zoe big girl, go through big scanner". I know she loves to "be touched", her version of being body searched because she always asks for it, especially if I have to go through it. The security people are usually really nice and give her a light pat down but with the freakiness about child touching in the US I doubt they will even be allowed to do it, let alone be convinced to do it. So I remind myself to explain this to her again when we approach security. Last time she didn't get touched she had a melt down and I had to go and ask for it. Who should have known that we would end up so backwards?
I have started preparing Zoe by talking about what she wants to bring; so far she wants to bring her 'big baby' and the baby's stroller. I just bought an iPad mini which I'm loading up with games and videos for the airplane ride. When we talked about the airport security yesterday I realized one thing: we will be sent through the 'old fashioned' x-ray portal rather than the futuristic body scanner that most people go through and I doubt that they will "touch" Zoe. When I explained her all this she was very disappointed. "Zoe wanna touch. Zoe big girl, go through big scanner". I know she loves to "be touched", her version of being body searched because she always asks for it, especially if I have to go through it. The security people are usually really nice and give her a light pat down but with the freakiness about child touching in the US I doubt they will even be allowed to do it, let alone be convinced to do it. So I remind myself to explain this to her again when we approach security. Last time she didn't get touched she had a melt down and I had to go and ask for it. Who should have known that we would end up so backwards?
No comments:
Post a Comment