Two dogs, a pregnant person and a stroller

Wow! You may be thinking to yourself, "Sounds like a complete train wreck". Well, this will be my life after Baby K makes her debut and all the parents go home and aren't here to help with stuff around the house, so we kind of need to figure it out sooner than later.

I was a little worried about how it was going to go, considering that I had to download the users manual for our stroller before I could even get out the door. The dogs and I had been practicing in the apartment with the stroller for the past couple of weeks, but had not ventured out yet. Here's the stroller we're working with that will shortly play a big part in our daily activity.

It is a serious stroller, but as it is our primary mode of transportation, we need something like this. After I figured out how to get the bassinet off the base of the stroller and how to collapse the base so that I could carry it downstairs, we were sort of on our way out the door. It was a multiple step process:

1. Fold base and take downstairs, go back upstairs;
2. Carry bassinet into hallway, lead dogs out of apartment, lock door behind us;
3. Get on elevator with bassinet and dogs and go down;
4. Unload off elevator, prop front door open, hook dogs to hand rail;
5. Take base outside to driveway, unfold;
6. Carry bassinet out of apartment entry, load onto base;
7. Unhook dogs, release stroller break, GO!

Here we are in the elevator on the way down. Me, the bassinet and two dogs is pretty much all that will fit in the elevator at one time. Obviously Tanner can't be on top of the bassinet like that, but I think he was partially on there because of what was wrapped up in Baby K's blanket…

One other amusing tidbit that the trainer said to do was to put something in the stroller to add some weight…you know, like there's a kid in there. So I put the small bag of dog food I had in there to add a few kilos of weight. I did wrap it in a blanket as well, so I didn't look any crazier than we already would. Today I replaced the dog food with an eight pound weight instead.

Overall, the walk went really well. Luckily my friend AH was up for the adventure and joined us on the walk. The dogs are not afraid of the stroller and aren't constantly in front of it or getting their leashes tied up in the wheels or anything.

As far as the dogs are concerned, the one thing we need to work on is that the stroller blocks their view of what's on the other side of the sidewalk, so if there's a dog passing, often they get surprised, which leads to barking…exactly what we don't want. We worked on that more with the trainer today and will continue to practice strategies until Baby K arrives.

The other thing I quickly figured out is that I need to learn how to drive the thing too! I'm used to going off curbs, around corners quickly and down lots of steps. Not so much anymore- I can't take this thing down the stairs without jolting Baby K around a lot…oops. The other thing I realized was  need to learn to load the bassinet without slamming it in there- another thing that would wake her up. It's not that the stroller can't handle those things, but I don't need to jolt Baby K awake at every chance I get. I'll keep you updated on our progress.

On a somewhat related note, as of today we're 35 days out from Baby K's due date!