California Trip, Day 1

In a very last-minute turn of events, on July 19 Nell and I flew out to Northern CA to visit my family and attend a camping reunion of many long-time friends.  We were sad that Nathan couldn't come (and I was mildly nervous about traveling with a two-month old without another pair of hands to help), but I was so glad that Nell got to meet her Grandpa (my Dad), aunts and uncles, cousins, and more!  We arrived in California late Thursday night, and got back into Boston around midnight the following Monday.  A whirlwind trip, but one worth a couple of blog posts, I say.

That Thursday was just an evening, not a full day of the trip, but... it was Nell's first time meeting Grandpa!  The moment was captured with a couple of blurry iPhone photos:

The flights themselves were mostly uneventful.  Nell slept like, well, a baby, and hardly made a peep the whole time.  The flight attendants oohed and aahed over her, and neighboring passengers marveled at how she was so quiet they didn't even know there was a baby on board.

The only really difficult moments were:

1) My first flight was delayed by about 45 minutes, turning what should have been an almost hour-long connection into about 12 minutes for me to sprint through three terminals, pushing the stroller holding Nell's carseat, her diaper bag, and my carryon, carrying Nell in the ergobaby carrier, her head bouncing as she smiled up at me with glee as though to say, "Mom, this is fun!  Why don't we do this more often?"  We made the connection -- barely.

2) I went to change Nell's diaper in the plane lavatory, only to find that there was no fold-down changing surface.  My only option was to use the folded down toilet seat with my changing pad laid on top of it, but there wasn't room for me to bend over it without leaving the bathroom door open and sticking my butt out into the aisle.  {Being a mom is so glamorous.}  Right after I finished changing her diaper, while she was still laying on her back, Nell erupted with spit up, shooting what appeared to be the entire contents of her last feeding out of her mouth and her nose about a foot into the air.  She was drenched, the bathroom floor was wet and slippery, I was partially soaked, my feet were covered in sticky, sour milk, and Nell started crying because some of it was in her eyes.

I cleaned the two of us up, changed Nell's clothes, mopped up the floor with paper towels, and returned to my seat, with my fellow passengers probably wondering why it took me about 30 minutes to use the restroom.

Yep, glamorous life of a mom and all that.

And like I said, at the end of it there were Grandma and Grandpa to meet Nell.  

Since my brother Christopher's flight was getting in a few hours later, in the interim, we went out to dinner.  Oh California, I love your salad bars.  Why don't we have good salad bars in Massachusetts?

By the time we were at my parents' house and Nell and I were snug in bed, it was almost 2:00 am CA time, 5:00 am MA time.  A very long 20-some hours with no sleep.

Crawling into bed that night felt so good.

Next up: California Trip, Day 2: "Swallows and Amazons Forever!"