Here, Mommy is reading to Richie from his Hanukkah book! Oma arranged to have a series of books sent to Richie once a month. They have all been very nice books!
We decided to drive to Atlanta and then to Cape Coral for the week I had off in December. Mommy is smart enough to know that Richie does not like new toys until he's seen them once or twice so here she is introducing a new toy that we held aside for the 40 hrs we were going to spend driving. What was I thinking?
Richie has always enjoyed looking at himself in the mirror. Actually, he often spends quite a good deal of time doing it. Can you say, "Narcissus?" Lately he has started kissing himself. Well, really, licking his reflection. I mean, yes, he is a cute kid, but, well, let's just say that we've started saving for his therapy sessions.
Just another cute shot with Richie enjoying his rocking chair.
The Trip To Atlanta
I started planning this out several months ago. I scheduled myself to take IR (overnight) call on Thursday the 17th of December so I would be off on Friday. Then I scheduled to have that weekend off followed by the next week. Giving us 9 days to make it down to Florida and back. Ultimately, we went to Atlanta first and then continued on to Cape Coral. The hope was that I would get a sufficient amount of sleep Thursday night that we'd be able to leave Friday. Fortunately, that worked out! We rented a car Friday morning, packed up (packed that car within an inch of its life) and hit the road around 1p. About an hour later than I wanted, but still not too late. I figured we'd get to Aunt Stinky's house around midnight. We knew bad weather was on the way, but all of our information told us that it was going to hit on Saturday.
We made our way to Richmond, got onto I-85 and continued to peddle South. Around 4p when we were just getting into North Carolina, it started to flurry. By this time, Mommy was taking a turn driving while Daddy was fading in-and-out in the back next to Richie. Darkness fell about an hour later and we switched driving. Right around that time, the snow was starting to accumulate on the sides of the roads and grass, but the highway was still pretty dry. Over the next four hours, the snow became progressively heavier and my speed became slower. It was like being back in Michigan again. There were cars spun-out all over the place, but I knew what to do and I think all of the extra weight in the car (a Pontiac G6) was really helping. The road crews were salting and plowing and it was not too bad. We drove through Burlington at about 35 miles/hour but the cleaning crews were doing their job.
Then we arrived in Greensboro. No crews. Snow packed on the highway about 3 inches thick. I was driving about 10 miles/hour. We had called Papa-Nat and found out that the snow turned to rain about 90 miles away from us. After the third car spun out next to me while trying to pass me I decided it was enough. Mommy programmed the GPS for the nearest hotel she recognized, which was a Red Roof Inn, about 3 miles away. We had to get onto another highway via a ramp that had clearly not been used in some time given the amount of accumulation. We dove down this other highway as we approached the Greensboro airport. There were several hotels, so I knew we'd be able to get a room in one of them. The right turn to get onto the road that the hotel was off of, was up a hill and we were already pointing upward. There were two minivans that were trying to make the turn and both got stuck and slid back into the intersection. One of them took a detour through a Steak House just past the intersection that was much more level than the road and was able to make it past the bad part. We followed him. He was also going to the Roof. We arrived and he was in line in front of me. We talked about the snow while he asked for a room and the clerk said, "That will be $59.99." His response was, "Really?! I would have paid anything for a room!" We all laughed and she explained that they knew this was going to happen tonight, that the news reports and local stations have been talking about it all week, but the city did not pre-treat the roads. All of the employees who were working in the hotel the following day had already come in and were staying in the hotel. When it was my turn, I decided to get whatever was their biggest room, which turned out to be their King-business class. 30% bigger than their normal room and still, "$59.99" because she was feeling generous. I thanked her profusely especially since she found a ground floor room which was key because of Richie. And, it was not a big deal to her that we did not know when we were going to be able to leave.
I should point out that Mommy did a fantastic job of keeping Richie quiet while I was struggling with the road especially because he was getting fussy right when things were getting bad. One of the interesting things you learn to do when you're driving in snow is to use your hips along with all of our other senses. They tell you first when you start to have some lateral shifting which usually starts long before you actually loose complete control. Yeah Mommy! Great job!
We unpacked the car, got Richie settled and ordered pizza. The hotel had given us the #'s of 2 places that were still delivering. We had called for Chinese but they had just stopped delivering. I was stunned that Domino's was still delivering until I met the delivery person who was clearly from Russia. Yes, he got a big fat tip!
Here's a shot of the room the next day.
The next morning, I was faced with cleaning the car. Unfortunately, the rental company did not think to include a scraper in the car. Mommy had the great idea of using the pizza box. It worked perfectly!
This G6 was parked next to us. Our car had a lot more snow on it, but I forgot to take a picture of it before cleaning it all off.
We hit the road, which was clear, and made it to Aunt Stinky's around 5p. There were plenty of cars spun-out and abandoned on the side of the road until we got to Charleston. There was even an 18-wheeler on the other side of the highway which had slid off the road and tipped over.
Richie and his cousin Eli with Aunt-Stinky!
Richie being introduced to his first cat. Up close. He did not seem to enjoy it too much. He's used to being the smallest creature around!
Richie enjoying his Godfather, cousin David. Who looks a little like Daddy. Cousin Connor is off to the side.
Richie got to see GG again, and not in a hospital setting, which was really great!
Cousins Sam and Eli received remote control cars for a present. Richie was studying them. I cannot really call it playing.
Bath time! Have you ever seen a cat that actually enjoys a bath?! I had not!
There were other bathtub pictures, but someone was always exposed. So, to protect the innocent later in life, I decided not to post them. :-)
Here we are making our way down to Cape Coral, Florida.
Ironically, the only picture I have with Nana in it has her head cutoff. Her children will find this totally hilarious because Nana has a long history of doing the very same thing! At the end of the table is Richie's cousin Sarah. He met all of his first cousins except 1, on this trip. He's met all of his aunts except 1, too. Aunt Debbie (Sarah's mother) was nice enough to find us a loaner highchair for our visit. He hated this one as much as he hates his own.
I'm puzzled that somehow we don't have more pictures from Cape Coral. Sorry!
Here are a couple of pictures as we're making our way back North on I-95. We skipped Atlanta so we could save about 3 hours on the way back home.
Here are a couple of things we did/learned on the trip. We already knew that Richie dislikes the car seat in our car. He screams almost every time we put him in it. Also, it does not have any side impact protection, but it doesn't need it because it is wedged in the middle of our car. We decided to get a nice seat for the trip with some side impact protection. The seat is too large for our Subaru, but we figured we'd be getting a second car one of these days. So, we took Richie to Target and did something I think was brilliant. We let him sit in a bunch of the seats that had acceptable safety ratings to see what he thought. We put him in this one, and not a peep! I looked around the seat and played with the strap a little. We put him in a Britax Marathon, which is a very popular seat, and he FREAKED OUT. We put him back in this Evenflo...silence and smiles. We tried a Graco and had the same response as the Britax. We already knew what happened when we used the Cosco. So, the Evenflo it was! Well rated by consumer reports and rated acceptable by Richies everywhere! Amazingly, he almost never cried when we put him in this seat on the entire trip. What we did learn is, he lasts about 8 hours with constant entertainment. After that, he wants OUT! I cannot blame him.
Another thing we learned on this trip was the almost no Wendy's have baby-changing stations in their restrooms. All of the Arby's, however, do. It is clear how this is going to impact us. Several times we had to change Richie's diaper on the trunk of the G6 in the Wendy's parking lot. Fortunately, the little wing serves as a nice protector from Richie rolling.
We made it back and all of the 18 inches of snow had melted. But, it snowed again!
We decided, for New Year's, that we would wake Richie up. He had seen fireworks in July, but he was now almost twice as old! And, we figured he would not sleep through them anyway. In reality, it was our neighbors who were shooting them over our house that were the loudest. Richie enjoyed them, at least at first. He got a little sick of them toward the end, but he did pretty well.
It was overcast that night with a pretty low cloud lining, so many of the fireworks were obscured by the clouds.
On a side note, I/we were fortunate enough to win a Woot-off Random Bag of Carp! It included four Sansa MP3 players which are like the ipod-nano. One Sansa clip. One charging station, without the power supply, however. A camera bag. A model plane and a Mr. Spock bobblehead doll.
I'm not sure where/when this picture was taken. It's a cute look, I think.
Bath time! He's really has started to enjoy it a lot! He likes to drain the water out and play with the spigot. He also like to turn the water on, but that usually results in him getting flooded with very cold water!
We are now members of the Maryland Science Center and they have a large kids section. This is Richie's favorite place which is basically a big water-bed room that you can walk, sit and play upon. There are vinyl-covered blocks to play with, too. This was actually taken TODAY!
We went to H-Mart today to get Richie his newest favorite food...rice cakes! We enjoyed their sushi-salad for dinner while he pigged out!
Here's a Movie of bath-time!
