More Florida Photos

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10 months old & Florida

I can't believe he's in the double digits! He might as well be graduating from high school, I feel that he's all grown up now. Silly, I know.

We just got back from Florida where Wesley got to hit the beach for the first time. He was apprehensive about putting his toes into the sand, but had no problem putting the sand in his mouth. (The other day we caught him lying on  the ground sucking on the wheel of his stroller.)

We went with my parents and brother and grandparents, so it was a 4-generational vacation. We stayed at the Pink Shell and had a 2-bedroom 2-bath suite for the 6 of us (grandparents got their own suite) with beautiful views of the beach. The hotel was lovely - beautiful pool, good food, and the room was nice. It was great for families with young kids and there were plenty of them.

Wesley is a great vacation-er. He slept through both flights, and would have slept the entire way home had we not got diverted to Indianapolis (we ended up renting a car and driving home from there - anything better than sitting on a plane with a squirmy 10 month old).

He loved the pool however, and those swimming lessons helped because he wasn't scared and loved to kick his feet and move his arms when Matt helped him "swim." When we would sit him on the edge of the pool, he kept trying to "jump" in. But the pool was also 0-depth and Wesley loved sitting in the water splashing (just like the tub). He didn't ever try to pull off his hat, but the sunglasses were not a hit with him.

One day we went to Naples and took a walk on their pier where we saw dolphins and jellyfish, and fisherman gutting caught fishes. Then we walked along some of Naples pretty downtown streets where Wesley's stroller almost ran over a large black snake hanging out on the sidewalk.

We had some Good Eats too -- most notably a heavenly biscuit sandwich for breakfast at the Heavenly Biscuit one morning (when my mom watched the baby) -- a tiny shack of a place that had the best biscuits and cinnamon rolls right on the main strip, but don't blink or you'll miss it. For dinner one night, we went "upscale" and had dinner at the Sandy Butler. Wesley was really well-behaved and made another girlfriend with the waitress. They had the best key lime pie on the trip. And one morning we drove into Fort Myers for famous donuts from Bennetts - really good coffee too.

We were sad that we only stayed 5-days (we thought we'd be ready to go after 5 and this way Matt only took 3 vacation days). Everyone else is leaving Friday and after our ordeal on the flight home, we should have just stayed. Oh well... we're back in the cold weather now (this May has been terrible here).

Poor ol' Grandma

It looks like no one wants to be called Grandma anymore. Too old sounding for the Baby Boomers who are becoming grandparents, it seems.

At first when I read the articles in Babble & NY Times, I thought that this is just a typical trend now that 60 is the new 40 and stretch denim has been invented. But then I took a step back. Does Wesley have a Grandma and Grandpa? Nope. Did my mom want to be called Grandma? Nope. Did we actually discuss her new name? Yep.

So it looks like we're also guilty of the Grandma-trap.

My husband's parents are Gaga (pronounced Gagi, this is what my MIL called her grandma) and Pop (this is what he wants to be called). My parents are Nonno (Italian for grandpa since my dad is from Italy) and... well, this is where we get confusing... my mom still doesn't know what she wants to be called. In the interim, I've nicknamed her Nanalee (Nana + Lee from her name Rosalie), and even though she likes this name, she's holding out that Wesley will come up with something better.

Better than Nanalee?

Maybe she's hoping that Wesley will follow in the footsteps of Paula Dean's grandson. On the Today Show a while back, Paula Dean was telling them that her son wanted his baby to call her Granny, in which she replied that if he did she was going to cut him out of her will. But her little grandson found a cuter name .. Ginny (pronounced /g/). As much as I love to make fun of Paula, that was pretty cute.

But my mom's not a Ginny. According to these articles, Goldie Hawn is being called GlamMa ... now if only my mom had thought of that first.  She doesn't have the long blond hair, but can she pull off GlamMa?

Wes and his Grandma, Nana, Glamma??

Traveling with Cloth Diapers

We've taken our first real trip with a baby in cloth diapers.  I was worried about this trip and thought for a second, I might be putting the baby in disposables. But I knew there was a way and what we did worked really well for us. How did we do it and what did we bring?

1. Pocket diapers: We use these at night and pre-folds during the day. But for the trip, I only used pockets. I bought 2 more so that meant our stash of 8 pockets was coming along for the ride. This was by far easier than pre-folds for on-the-go travel.

2. Extra inserts: For the day, we put the baby in a pocket with a large & small insert; so we brought extra large inserts for night time.

3. Wet/Dry bag: At home we have a diaper pail liner.  For traveling, we bought a wet-dry bag like this one from PlanetWise.  It's also great for all sorts of travel and we even use it when he goes by my mom's (so she has a place to put the stinkies). It's a must for traveling.

4. Liners: At home, when the baby poos we use a diaper sprayer (attached to the toilet); but that's not possible on this trip. So I bought some GroVia flushable diaper liners that are super thin and lay on the diaper (between diaper and baby). If he poos, you can take the liner and flush it away. If he pees, it goes through the liner. Takes away all the mess and a must for travel in my opinion.

5. Washer/Dryer: We stayed at my in-laws who were okay with us washing the diapers in their machine. For any future trips, access to a washer/dryer is a must.

On the plane, I put the baby in a disposable for travel to the airport because I didn't want to bring a dirty dipe on the plane. Then before we boarded, we put him in a pocket cloth diaper.

That's about it. This was our first time and we thought it went really well.

Happy traveling!

Nashville April 2011

Last weekend, we headed downt o Nashville to visit my husband's family and introduce the baby to his "southern roots." We were there last when I was 27 weeks pregnant.

For the most part, it was a relaxing weekend but when we arrived home we wanted to crash in bed for 48 hours. Traveling with the baby let us see everything as if for the first time, but at the same time our minds were constantly occupied. Even sitting outside on the deck enjoying a drink meant watching the baby as he tried to swipe at it.

One of the main reasons for the trip was that Matt wanted to run the Music City 1/2 Marathon. We were there cheering the runners along in 2010 and that's when Matt decided he would run this race in 2011. So he trained starting in January and here he was in April running his first major race. We couldn't have been prouder. Unfortunately, Friday night was a bad one for the baby (who was a restless sleeper on this entire trip) and we slept in, the baby & I, Saturday morning. This meant we missed Matt running at the 4 & 8 mile markers. I was so sad because I promised him I'd be there and he said that at 8 miles he was feeling some pain and could have used my winning smile (I made that last part up).

We tried some new places on this trip ... we had an early Mother's Day breakfast for my mother-in-law at Marche Artisan foods and breakfast sans baby at Frothy Monkey. And we enjoyed ... seeing our nephew run the Kids Marathon at LP Field, walking around Centennial Park, watching our nephew's baseball game, and eating BBQ. My in-laws were thrilled having Wesley for 5 days (and nights), he was a really good little boy on this trip, smiling and playing and not displaying any sort of separation anxiety as I passed him off.

At Marche for Breakfast

At Centennial Park

Getting BBQ

At LP Field for Kids Marathon

After the race with his celebratory coffee

At the baseball game - go Indians!

Cousins!

How we traveled with the baby?

The flight was short and we stayed with my husband's parents so this was a good first trip for the baby. My in-laws bought a car seat (it paid for itself on this visit alone), and we brought an umbrella stroller. We packed 1 small canister of formula and bought the rest there (including baby food). We also brought 8 pocket diapers and extra inserts for night time and that was perfect since we used my MIL's washing machine (a lot). I bought a tie-back travel high chair and it worked, but the baby was happier being fed as he sat on the floor or in someone's lap.

First plane ride

Last week we went to Nashville to visit my husband's family. This was the baby's first plane trip and as much as I was looking forward to it, I was dreading it all the same.  No longer am I packing for one person, throwing stuff in a suitcase and grabbing gobs of magazines for the plane.  Now it has to be a choreographed, well-oiled machine packing bottles and diapers and figuring out what to take on the plane and hoping the one toy he needs won't accidentally be in the checked luggage.

I started packing for this trip 1 week in advance. But even with all the planning, it was still a head-spinning day.

The day we left, we scheduled his 9 month doctor's appointment in the morning and I took the day off of work. Before we left to go, I put the baby on the bed to run into the bathroom and I hear this boom followed by a horrible scream ... I run into the bedroom and there's the baby lying on the hardwood floors face-down.  I thought I was going to die and rushed to him. Luckily all he had was a bump on the forehead but it took a lot to calm his screams.  He's never been so mobile before and this was a wake-up call that he can't be left alone on the bed anymore.  We got to the doctor's early to show them the bump and were reassured that he was fine and that even though the image will haunt me, I should erase the guilt. Not so easy.

All packed and ready to go!

Since we cloth diaper, I tried to think of the best way to handle the situation. I didn't want to bring a dirty diaper on the plane, so I put the baby in a disposable for the trip to the airport and once we were about to board I'd switch him into a cloth. Sounded like a good plan until we were in line for security and I felt something warm and realized that the baby had leaked out of the disposable; his pants were soaked and there I was stuck in line with a very wet baby. Through security we rushed through stroller, bags, jackets, it felt like we had a ton of stuff. Then ... Matt gets "randomly selected."  And there I was, wet baby in my arms taking everything off the conveyer 1-handed.

After that, Matt pointed us towards the nearest bathroom and I ran, bag falling off one arm, wet pee pee baby in the other. As I started to undress him, I hear, "I was always worried I'd go into the women's bathroom by mistake." I look around to see I'm surrounded by men. Yep, I ran into the men's bathroom. In hindsight, I should have just said OH WELL and kept on changing him but no, I grabbed everything and sped out the door to the women's room next door.

Whew ... But no. Everything was not finished yet. Just as I was about to put on a clean diaper, the baby peed all over the changing table. There he laid in a pool of pee as I grabbed handfuls of paper towels and wipes, not before letting out one big sigh.

All cleaned up, we met Matt who looked at me, "What's wrong?" All I wanted to say was, "I'm going home." To put it in perspective, from the moment I discovered Wes peed to this was only about a 1/2 hour. I was wiped out.

On the plane!

But we lucked out the rest of the time, Wes was really good on the plane. He didn't cry and while he was awake, he was content to play with toys and look out the window. He was a natural traveler. On the way home, he slept the entire time. And so did I!