Flying and the New Family

Thanks for your story Peter. What I'm finding is that come a nice Saturday,
I have a number of things that "need" to be done as well as some "needed"
quality time with my son. Flying usually loses out. However, I do get out
from time to time to polish up my IFR procedures.

It's hard. Especially when my 1 1/2 year old walks around the house looking
for me after I've gone to work. It makes it hard to have him go through that
when I fly when he can't understand why I'm not there. I can't wait until he
can wear his own headphones!

Marco

"Peter Weaver" wrote in message
...
Marco Leon wrote:
Hi all. I've noticed a considerable decrease in flight hours
since my
son was born a little over a year ago. My wife is also 5
months
pregnant with another so flying time may suffer further
decline. I'm
wondering...what are some of your experiences during the
life-changing event of a new family and flying? Did you
start flying
more often after the kids hit a certain age? What did you do
to find
more time?
...

My daughter was born June 29th, since then every time the
weather looked good enough to go flying I was just too tired
to go. A week ago Sunday the weather was great, I did not feel
exhausted for the first time in five months and the flying
club had a Cherokee available. I booked it and told my wife
that I would just do circuits because I have not gone for a
while. When I got to the airport the instructors thought it
would be good to have one of them along for a few circuits,
since I have not flown with an instructor for the last six or
seven years I thought it was a good idea too. So we did one
touch and go, one soft field landing and a practice emergency
landing, after that I did four more circuits on my own. The
whole thing felt great. It was great being in the air again,
and it was great knowing that when I did not feel safe enough
to fly for the last five months I did not have to. Now I'm
hoping to get up in the air at least once every two months and
take my daughter up after he second birthday (my wife is
worried about putting headphones on her before then).

--
Peter Weaver
Weaver Consulting Services Inc.
Canadian VAR for CHARON-VAX
www.weaverconsulting.ca





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Yeah, we just got hit this month for the first time. My son go a cough and
ear infection and 3 days later both my wife and I got it too. I had mine for
over 10 days as well as my wife. Now that we're better, my son gets it
again! Damn!

I hope we start building up an immunity to this thing soon.

Marco

"L Smith" wrote in message
ink.net...
Believe me, it happens. My son, who was three at the time, came down
with the
flu about Dec 29 or 30 one year. Come New Year's Day, he was fine and
raring
to go. Mom and I weren't! (We'd caught the bug.) I got the early shift,
parking myself
in front of the bowl games and getting the kid fed now and then. About
two o'clock,
woke the wife and told her I couldn't go any longer without a nap - her
turn!

The ironic part is the fact that we were living with my parents at the
time, but they
couldn't look after Ryan because they had gone to visit my Aunt and
Uncle. We
found out later, though, that even if they had been home, they were both
sick too.

Rich Lemert




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Thanks Sidney. You're absolutely right, there's a million things "to do"
with the family and around the house. Now it's holiday shopping and in
January, it's catching up on all the things we put off in December! I think
I just have to get up really early on some weekends to get in the air. The
problem is that my safety pilot list is quite small at 6AM on a cold winter
Saturday!

Marco

"Snowbird" wrote in message
om...
"Marco Leon" mleon(at)optonline.net wrote in message
...
Hi all. I've noticed a considerable decrease in flight hours since my
son
was born a little over a year ago. My wife is also 5 months pregnant
with
another so flying time may suffer further decline. I'm wondering...what
are
some of your experiences during the life-changing event of a new family
and
flying? Did you start flying more often after the kids hit a certain
age?

Yeah. It got easier after our daughter was sleeping pretty solidly
through the night. About a year, even better after two years.
Frankly it was about 3 years before I really started to feel
normal again as far as energy level and such and we got back to
being able to complete projects around the house and so forth.

And yes, Jay, we took her along, but frankly 1) toting along
a child in diapers adds considerably to the logistics, even if
"mommy is the kitchen" and bottles/formula aren't a concern
2) working full time and parenting full time is *tiring* and
there were plenty of times when I had time to fly, but was just
too *tired* 3) IMO when a child is small (say less than 2 or
so) if one expects them to *like* flying, someone had better
make it their primary job to tend to the child in the plane.

Now the problem is less "tired", and more that it seems every
fall/winter is spent fighting non-stop family wide colds. I'm
hoping this, too, shall pass some day.

What did you do to find more time?

I don't have a good answer to this. It was hard. Still is.
Frankly with both of us working full time, I would have been
kinda ticked if my husband was taking off to fly early mornings
or late nights more than 1-2 a week or so. It seemed as though
there was plenty to do to prepare for the next day with both of
us "on it" every bit we could spare.

I'm not sure how it would have been different if I were a SAHM.
Easier to spare the husband in the morning and harder in the
evening, I'm guessing.

Good luck!
Sydney



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Snowbird wrote:

EDR wrote in message ...
When my wife's father died out of state, a friend loaned me his
airplane to get my wife to her mother's side. The kids were 4 and 2, it
was the second child's first flight. For the trip home, I gave each of
the kids a grease pencil and they had fun drawing on the rear windows
for and hour and a half.

Gah! Glad it wasn't our plane...

Grease pencils are really wax... it wipes off with a clean cloth.
BTW... do you know how to remove crayon?
Spray WD-40 on the crayon marks (poster paint, markers, etc) you want to
remove. The WD-40 dissolves it.
See Binney & Smith website (www.crayola.com?).