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I Have Taken a Baby on Vacation and Lived to Tell the Tale

September 7, 2012 in Jack, On a Personal Note... with 3 Comments

Long time, no see, lovely readers! We have been busy busy busy over here. We returned late Tuesday night from our first ever vacay as a family of three and I’ve spent the past two days recovering and unpacking. We had so much fun. Like way more fun than I thought we would. I don’t know what I was expecting. I guess I was so busy thinking about the logistics of traveling A) right after a hurricane and B) with a little bitty baby that I didn’t even consider what the trip itself might be like. In short, it was much easier than I expected and we had a blast.

The purpose of our trip was to attend Nick’s cousin’s wedding in Connecticut. Vinnie is his only first cousin on his dad’s side and Nick was a groomsman. Nick’s been telling Jack for weeks about all the relatives he was going to meet, and he was right. So many people came that we hadn’t seen in years (and lots and lots of people I was meeting for the first time). I was more than a little flattered at how many of them said they’d read my blog! I couldn’t believe it. I don’t even know what to say except that I’m surprised and flattered. I wish I’d been able to talk to some of them more, everyone was so nice!

Jack was an awesome little traveler. It seems he finds the sounds and movements of planes, trains, and automobiles rather soothing as he napped right through almost every one of those experiences. I’d read online that a big reason why babies cry on planes is that they don’t know how to adjust their ears to the pressure, so I just nursed or encouraged him to suck on the pacifier whenever we were landing and taking off and he did great. Folks came up to us after every flight and commented on how “good” he was. Of course if he’d cried it wouldn’t have been the end of the world and it wouldn’t mean he’s “bad”, but it was nice not to have the added stress of a distressed baby and resentful passengers.

The wedding was a blast. My family is very WASP-y so to experience this wedding full of Greeks and Puerto Ricans and Brazilians felt quite exotic. The ceremony was held in the Greek Orthodox Church, which was beautiful. I was SHOCKED that Jack slept through the whole reception. It was late by the time it started and I thought for sure we’d have to leave as soon as dinner was over to get him to bed, but he snoozed in our arms despite the loud music. Here’s the world’s worst cell phone picture of him sleeping on Nick’s lap during dinner. Update: I just realized I took a picture with my camera. Can you see that he’s wearing a little tuxedo onesie with a little baby bowtie? Adorbs.

We have some friends and family in NYC (all on Nick’s side; I am not nearly that fancy), and since we were staying with Nick’s aunt and Abuela about 50 miles away in southern Connecticut we decided to take the train in to visit. We spent two long days down there, coming back after midnight both nights, but once again Jack seemed unfazed by our shenanigans. He went all around the city in the Baby Bjorn, even sticking to his regular 8:30 bedtime as festivities carried on around him.

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Here he is with Nick’s Aunt Holly in Bryant Park.

We got really good at public nursing and diaper changes–I feel like I can take him anywhere now! We didn’t really plan to have him out so much but it just sort of happened and as long as he seemed to be doing well we saw no reason to take him home. Of course, the decision of how much to bring your young baby out into the world is a personal one that will probably be different for every family, but we’re pretty laid back and things are working out well for us so far. In fact, Jack’s doing better than I did–I caught a cold and lost my voice, while he hasn’t had so much as a sniffle! He must take after Nick, who hardly ever gets sick.

I think maybe my favorite part of the whole trip is that we got our first ever family picture. Nick’s dad snapped this one right before we all started getting dressed for the wedding.

I’m totally going to frame it. As much fun as we had, I think we’re all glad to be back home. On our return flight we were supposed to have an hour layover in Chicago–just enough time to change Jack’s diaper and grab something to eat–but our flight out of New York got delayed by an hour so we were literally racing through an airport neither of us had ever been to before to be the last people on the plane just before they shut the cabin door. We’d checked one big bag full of all our clothes and Jack’s pack n play and, let me tell you, I have never been so relieved to see my luggage appear on the baggage claim carousel. My wardrobe is pretty limited right now and I was so worried that every piece of clothing that fits would be stranded in Chicago. By the time we finally got home after midnight on Tuesday we were exhausted. I still haven’t unpacked all the way. Luckily this weekend we’ll be taking it pretty easy, save for taking Jack to his first ever LSU game! I think Nick is so excited he could die. The way I’m feeling I might just sleep through the whole thing, haha.

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A Week of Firsts

August 31, 2012 in On a Personal Note... with 3 Comments

Well, Nick and I survived our first hurricane as real life property-owning grownups relatively unscathed. We didn’t even lose power. We did, however, have a tree break in a very inconvenient location. We slept downstairs in the guest room Tuesday night, so we’re not sure exactly when it happened. I walked upstairs sometime Wednesday afternoon and noticed lots of leaves peeking through the curtains. I seriously thought to myself, “Huh, that’s strange, I don’t remember there being a tree over there.” Haha! How dumb am I? I went and looked out the window and Duh! The whole top part of that tree was leaning over to the side. I’m glad we weren’t upstairs when it happened. I’m sure we would have been pretty freaked out, and it could easily have fallen towards the house instead of to the side.

Here’s a very sketchy iPhone pic of the situation from our neighbor’s yard.

We’ve had a tree service come out already and they’re gonna get ‘er done sometime over the next few days while we’re out of town (side note, I’m a much bigger fan of the phrase “get ‘er done” now that I know Larry the Cable Guy is a major philanthropist for hip dysplasia). It’s gonna cost almost $500, but Nick didn’t even bat an eye since the alternative would be him trying to tackle it on his own, which would probably result in an equally expensive visit to the hospital. And did you catch how I mentioned we’ll be out of town? That’s right, our flight was cancelled and rescheduled more times than we can count but we actually boarded a plane at 5:41 this morning. Here’s a photo we snapped at the gate. It’s Jack’s first flight! Doesn’t he look excited?

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We’re sooooo excited to take Jack to meet a bunch of relatives and maybe even visit NYC while we’re up there. Hopefully traveling cross-country with a two-month old isn’t the death of me, especially since we are way too cheap for direct flights, haha.

Ps, although we got really lucky in this storm (REALLY lucky, our street was the only one in the neighborhood that didn’t lose power), my hometown of Slidell, LA along with many other cities and towns along the LA and MS coasts appear to have suffered extensive flooding. Please keep them in your thoughts.

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Ready to Rumble

August 28, 2012 in On a Personal Note... with 2 Comments

Mark this as the first time ever that my penchant for vintage candlesticks has come in handy. This is our first hurricane since becoming homeowners and certainly our first as parents–it’s a little disconcerting to realize we’re responsible for life and property! Before Katrina hurricanes were pretty much all fun and games (mostly drinking games), We’re a little less flippant now, especially since Gustav in 2008 was no walk in the park either, but I’m really not too concerned about a Category 1 storm. Hopefully I’m not eating my words a few days from now, haha.

I’m more annoyed about this dang hurricane than anything else, as we were supposed to be flying out of New Orleans tomorrow to attend a wedding in Connecticut this weekend. Obviously that’s not happening! Our flights have been rescheduled three times now but we’re still hoping to make it. Nick is a groomsmen and I bought Jack the cutest outfit ever and so I am determined not to miss this wedding! Of course, we could have tried to move our flight up to today and miss the storm entirely, but I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving our pets to ride it out alone. Once the sky has cleared and the house is secure I’ll feel much better about leaving, even if the cats do have to stay in a house with no air conditioning.

So today I’m working on getting the laundry done, the dishes washed, and everybody bathed while we’ve still got power and clean water. When Nick gets home from work we’ll bring all the patio furniture in and hunker down for a hopefully very boring 48 hours. And if all goes as planned, we won’t even be in Baton Rouge for what is almost always the worst part of a hurricane–days on end with no power, food and fuel shortages, and traffic so bad you might as well stay home in the heat. Fingers crossed!

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Look Ma, No Harness!

August 24, 2012 in Jack, On a Personal Note..., Pets with 10 Comments

What a fabulous, fabulous day yesterday was! Jack had another ultrasound and his hips were perfect, so he no longer has to wear the harness!

I’m freeeeeeeeee!

He told me the thing he is most excited about is wearing pants. A whole new world of fashion possibilities just opened up after six weeks straight in nothing but onesies.

Juliet was eager to offer congratulatory kisses.

And Pistachio coincidentally chose this day to push her fear aside and come in for a sniff.

We are so, so excited to be done with that dang pavlik harness. We really did get used to it, but I’m glad it’s over. It’s so much nicer to cuddle a baby who’s not strapped into velcro. He was actually physically incapable of flopping over with it on, haha. He was such a rigid little man. And it was all scratchy on the outside. And those little baby legs! And feet! And toes! They were always covered up before, but no more! I can squeeze them to my heart’s content. Now I just got a little worried to realize I’ll be in charge of making sure his feet stay warm. Do babies his age need socks all the time, even in summer?

As for the harness, there’s an orphanage in China that’s in need of gently used pavlik harnesses, so it’ll be going in the mail as soon as I can get it washed. I asked my doctor’s office if they accepted donations for local families who couldn’t afford it, but they said they couldn’t take used ones. And as for why anyone would need something like this secondhand, would you believe that it costs nearly $800??? Fortunately our insurance covered most of it, but geez. That’s an awful lot of dough for some straps and velcro. It worked so well for Jack and literally changed the course of his life so I would love for another child to benefit from it as well.

Thanks again to all of you who were so supportive of us during this time. It really did make the whole thing easier to bear. And if you’re just reading this post and wondering what the heck this whole harness thing is all about, you can read my first post about it here, and read about when we found out he wouldn’t need surgery at the bottom of this post.

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