In like a lion…

What a month March was!  The Mr. was out of town for the entire first work-week at a conference, leaving me to tend to the little all by myself.  Confession time:  I’m a little bit very spoiled in the fact that The Mr. is pretty much a super husband and father, thus I’ve never really had to tackle handling the baby alone.  Like ever.  It seemed a bit daunting, but we actually had a fantastic week and both survived – hurrah!

Then I exacted some revenge (I kid, I kid…) by leaving them at home and flying down to Florida for a girls weekend at the beach with some of my besties.  It was a fantastic time – the weather was gorgeous and I loved spending time with my friends who I haven’t seen in ages.  This, of course, tested the Mr.’s solo parenting skills and wouldn’t you know the baby got a fever + vomiting + general yuckiness.  Poor baby, but Super Daddy took care of her like a champ and luckily it was at the end of the weekend and I was on my way back.

The following week we finally were all in town at the same time and headed up to the mountains for a weekend of well deserved R&R.  It was super relaxing and there’s nothing cuter than seeing how excited the Mr. gets when he’s in the mountains.

(And I think we’ll stay put at least until summer!)

Anniversary

For our first anniversary, I was a good 8 months pregnant and in no mood to do anything except have a lovely dinner and go straight to bed.  Needless to say, I planned on something a little more adventurous this year.

I surprised the Mr. with a little weekend trip to Athens.  Being a former bulldog, he had wanted to get back to UGA and explore the quaint little town for a while.  We stayed at a fantastic hotel and had an amazing dinner at 5 & 10, sprinkled in with some strolling through the streets of downtown.

Athens is gorgeous, especially in the fall.  You’d like it.

Boston

The family and I flew up to Boston this past weekend to attend Lynn & Ted’s wedding.  Lynn is the Mr.’s super gorgeous and sweet cousin, and Ted is awesome (though beardless now) and Mia’s biggest fan.  We just saw them here in September for my sister in law’s wedding, and now it was their turn!

Mia did pretty well on the flight up there, despite some rough patches.  She and I have the same attitude toward turbulence – it blows.  But she had some work to do and engaged in the available wi-fi and some Yo Gabba Gabba!

We flew into Logan and drove out toward West Groton. Boston traffic sucked, but we eventually made it to the hotel and met my in-laws there. Grandma and Grandpa were happy to see her, and we got to see her start cruising for the first time in their hotel room!

The wedding was lovely (once we finally made it there after getting lost a million times) and we were so happy to formally welcome Ted into the family. We then headed to the reception at a gorgeous restaurant that was a converted barn – the scenery was breathtaking, and Mia got to practice “What does the cow say? Mooooooooo” many times over.

Mia finally kept her promise to dance with the groom (she had promised Ted a dance at my sister in law’s wedding, but she had already started snoozing before she could do so!).

Speaking of snoozing…

We had a wonderful time. They even had a photo booth set up, as they said they were inspired by the one at our very own wedding!

Da plane!

The wee one and I took off to Orlando for Labor Day weekend so we could spend some time with my family.  It was her very first plane ride, and I have to say she and I managed pretty well.

I did all my research beforehand, so getting through security was a breeze.  Well, almost a breeze – I was so intent on getting the baby and her gear through without an issue that I forgot to take off my shoes before walking through the metal detector.  Ooops!

Mia pretty much dozed off before we even left the gate, so she slept through the entire take-off.  A little underwhelming, but I’ll take it.  Why?  Oh, you know my luck with flying.  We hit some pretty rough turbulence and her eyes widened and she let out the shrillest cry.  She wasn’t the only one – even the adults were freaked out.  I myself was pretty scared, but now I know what it’s like to have to put on a brave face for your children.  Thankfully it was a short flight!

We had lots of fun visiting with waipo (my mom) and my sister and her kids. We played and played, had dim sum, and even I got to get away and relax by the pool.

It was a fun short trip, but we were looking forward to getting back to Atlanta where it was (a little) cooler and less humid! Plus we missed the Mr. tons and tons!

Sigh… you’d never see this on Delta

MILFCon 2009

You know those annual girls weekend get-togethers that  I take every year?  Well, they were sort of interrupted by my wedding (which a few still made it) and some big anniversary trips last year.  I personally have made Chicago, San Antonio, Las Vegas, and Atlanta (duh).  This year a few of us got right back on schedule and headed to St. Louis, where our good friend AK lives and was a marvelous hostess.

This year was especially interesting since three of us are pregnant at the same time (and at different stages), so it was fun to finally catch up with them and see the bellies in person since we all live so far away from each other!  Plus, one of us *just* had a baby two months ago (and obviously couldn’t make it).  I think we counted about 20 1/4 children among us!

Our usual ritual is to arrive on Friday, which is designated pajama party night.  Totally low-key, we ordered pizza, and management had to tell us to shut it.  Typical.  Then sometime during the night we were designated as the MILF Convention. (I finally get to be the “M”!  I realized after knowing these awesome ladies for the last 10 years, that I am the last person to have my first child.  Whoa.)  Pretty soon the hotel staff and even complete strangers were referring to us as that, so it worked.

It was also my first time to St. Louis (aside from being in the airport), so we proceeded to do the touristy thing and saw the Arch.  I was totally fine with just going to take pictures of the Arch from outside, but the other preggos wanted to go up to the top.  But seriously, we were in lines (to get in, to buy tickets, to go up) for what seemed forever, but it was totally worth it to see Susanne’s face when she realized how tiny the capsules were to go up!  Claustrophobia is a bitch 😉  All in all it was pretty cool to be up top.  It was cool how it sort of sways back and forth with the wind (up to 4 feet each direction), and I got some pretty good shots of the city.

It was so good seeing my girls again, and I duly warned them of the multiple “HELP ME” phone calls they’ll be receiving once the baby gets here.  bonus – no hangover on the flight back this year!  And next year we’re heading back to the west coast – whee!

Babymoon

We decided to take a trip for just the two of us before the baby’s arrival (a “babymoon” as they’re calling it now), so off to Maui we went!  The last time I was in Maui was almost 10 years ago, and I was glad to see that it was still perfectly the same – peaceful, serene, and unspoiled.  Plus it was the Mr.’s first trip to the Hawaiian islands, and I was happy to be the person who introduced him.

We flew in overnight and awoke at sunrise (damn time zones) to this gorgeous sight:

Our hotel was located on Black Rock, one of the best snorkeling spots on the island (convenient when you’re 22 weeks pregnant and don’t want to spend any time on boats!).  We spent a few days just relaxing, sunning the belly, drinking fruity drinks, and snorkeling with giant sea turtles and sting rays.

Though our intentions were to totally relax, we devoted one day to explore the west coast of the island.  We definitely wanted to skip the Hana Highway’s tourist cavalry, and instead chose the remote mountains and coast toward Kahakuloa.  We stopped at several places along the way, including seeing the Dragon’s Teeth, Honolua Bay, saw the Nakele blowhole up close, took a dip in the Olivine Pools.

Nakele Blowhole

The blowhole was a sight to see.  Several people got up close to get a shower, but I was too hesitant to get that close to the hole (see below as a testament to my, um, gracefulness).  This is also where my husband was standing on the edge of a cliff above the ocean one minute, then gone the next.  Normally I’m a pretty level-headed person, but when I called out his name about 5 times and still couldn’t find him, I started freaking out and imagining myself as a single mother.  But I found him, who was on the other side of a large boulder and couldn’t hear me through the wind and crashing waves, and I didn’t have to make that phone call to his parents to explain how stupid we are.  La phew.

Olivine Pools

I did have a silly mishap at the Olivine Pools.  Almost all of the coastal sights we visited included hiking down to sea level (anywhere from 50 to 150 feet) on rocky slopes without designated trails.  I kinda impressed myself by actually doing this several times at this stage in my pregnancy.  I’m not huge, but you can’t miss the fact that I have a belly and my center of gravity is definitely off.  Anyway, I made it up and down (slowly) these cliffs several times.  Once we got down to the Olivine Pools, on completely flat and level ground, I slipped into one of the shallow pools of water right onto my butt (when you’re pregnant, you instinctively aim to fall backward) .  Luckily my bag didn’t get soaked and our phones were fine, but my camera got fried.  The SD card was still readable, though, so this is where my photos ended – thankfully the Mr. is less clumsy and it wasn’t the DSLR.  Eh, that’s life, and then we jumped into the deep pool for a swim!

So my pictures ended there, but our adventures didn’t.  We drove through the crazy one-laned highway on the cliffs, stopped in Kahakaluoa village, and continued through Wailuku and looped back around to Ka’anapali.  We spent the next day in Lahaina and Pa’ia, and even picked up a little souvenir for the baby.  Call me crazy, but I think this kid is taking after his/her mom and is happiest in the ocean and away from crowds, so this was just perfect.  A fantastic trip with my best guy… couldn’t ask for more.

For your safety

Fact:  I always carry pepper spray with me.

When we went to New York for a long Memorial Day weekend, I somehow forgot to remove it.  Officially you can put it in your checked baggage, but we didn’t check bags.

I didn’t realize that I even had it with me until we repacked for our flight out of Newark.  Oops.  I guess I could have just checked the bag, but everyone who’s ever flown into ATL knows that equates another hour of standing around and waiting, on top of the stupid $15 Delta fee.  Fuck that.

I smoothly and easily sailed through ATL’s airport security a contraband item, but I assume anything and everything is stupid in Atlanta and I was going to get caught here.  So there I was, freaking out in the security line and finally just threw it away.  Damn it.

Next time I’m “unknowingly” going to bring my 4(!) oz. container of lens solution.  Take that!

Where is my mind?

Answer: Still on the beach.

I had a great weekend and bachelorette shindig in West Palm, courtesy of my dear friend and uber hostess Sus. Seriously, how can you beat days that begin with buckets of rum and yachts on the ocean, only to be followed by VIP booths and 4 am air-guitar contests?

Happy to be home and see the Mr. and the pooch, but real life isn’t keeping me as distracted…

Greetings from Snorlando