Spastic Babble: A Trip Home

We spent last week visiting family- everyone met Emily for the first time!

It's a 16 hour drive halfway across the country. I was apprehensive as Emily is not a fan of her car seat, but she did so well! We rented a Toyota Highlander to take with us since we were supposed to be receiving presents at a party for the baby. We totally filled that thing up on the way back, we couldn't have taken our own cars.

I sat in the back with Em while David drove up front. It gave me the privacy I needed to pump (yup, every two hours I whipped the ladies out to get the baby her milk. It was amusing), while allowing me to feed Emily when she needed it.

She did so AMAZING, sleeping most of the time and calmly watching me when she was awake.

David did well too... I rented Harry Potter 4 and 7 from the library on a CD to listen to during the drive. We made it through all of 7 and then a few CDs into 4. I couldn't believe how much faster the drive went when we were listening.

The only car trouble we had was on our way back. After over ten hours on the first day of our return drive, Emily got car sick and projectiled onto me twice. We quickly decided that we were finished driving and stopped for the night.

While home, we were insanely busy. Every meal of every day was planned out to allow everyone maximum time to spend with the baby. We got home on a Thursday afternoon and managed to see both of our immediate families that night. The next day Emily was a three different meals with three sets of family and Saturday was our big party. Five hours of people holding her made her so tired that she refused to fall asleep and I had to nurse her that night to get her to finally pass out. Soon after I got a gall bladder attack, it was so horrendous that I had to take TWO percocet to make the pain go away. I was so out of it that when I pumped at 2 am (about three hours after I took the medicine), I fell asleep sitting up in bed.

On Sunday was Emily's blessing. She did so well and stayed so quiet all through the blessing and then the rest of church. I on the other hand was having a percocet hangover and was BARELY able to stay awake for a lot of the day. Then we headed over to the in-laws where they hosted my family as well as theirs for lunch and baby time.

Monday and Tuesday were both busy. We took time to get photos of everyone with Emily, including a few big family shots. Tuesday morning I photographed a friend's new baby, Micah was only 9 days old. He was such a sweet baby, easy to work with. Afterward I bought David lunch. We both marveled at the fact that we used money that I had just earned. (It's been awhile since I've made any income for us.)

It was good to come back home where we could slow down again and get Emily back into a routine. She can't figure out why people aren't holding her 24/7 anymore. I think she's sad.

Photos from the trip:

These are from Sunday when Emily was blessed-