Thanksgiving Road Trip

Yesterday we got back from our epic Thanksgiving roadtrip to Lubbock. There are so many things I want to record, but I think it will be more interesting for all of you in bullet point form, so here we go. (Enjoy the phone pictures - I haven't found my camera cord yet to upload the good ones, but they would still all be of the babies, so . . .)

CB at our first feeding stop. 

With a moo moo here . . .

• CB was pretty good in the car. She had some moments of major frustration, but overall, she was very patient with the long car ride. Thank heavens for the Baby Einstein music player my friend Sam sent me - I'd been saving it, and when I pulled it out during a particularly fussy time, CB was completely mesmerized - and the set of Old MacDonald puppets my friend Jill made for her. We were also saved a couple of times by a book my mom sent us for Halloween called I Love You, Little Pumpkin. The mirror in the back kept her from screaming for several minutes at a time during some of the worst stretches. Other than that, she slept a lot and we had to stop and feed her every few hours, plus she had blown out of her diaper by the second stop. Awesome. 

Snoozing on the way back with her monkey from her great-granny.

• I decided the right number of pies for this Thanksgiving was 6, so on Wednesday I made two pumpkin, a jumbleberry, an apple, a pecan, and a frozen chocolate. Aside from the fact that I seriously cannot seem to make the tops transfer without breaking them (and therefore Eric had to cover the rips with art) they were good! I was pleased. I'll be posting the recipes on Sisters-in-Long at some point, so watch for that. (Somehow I didn't take pictures of the pies or the turkey, but I think Uncle David did, so I'll have to get him to give me some.) 
• We made a turkey that was thoroughly delicious. I give my sister-in-law most of the credit for this, but I was very good on the moral support side. I only wish it had been bigger. There were not nearly enough turkey leftovers. 
• During Thanksgiving dinner, I let CB gnaw on a green bean. She thought it was delicious.

Mmm.  This toy tastes like butter.

• CB didn't nap. All. Week. Once we got there she would not go down. She was relatively cheerful about it, but she just wouldn't cooperate, and by the end of the week her fuse was getting shorter and shorter, especially with everything that was going on. This morning she went down for a two-hour nap and I nearly passed out in shock. (Of course, nap number two is still a work in progress. Sigh.) Thankfully, she was more than happy to go down at night, even though she was in a storage room in a pack and play. 
• Eric and his brothers did some plumbing and other fix-up work for their mom while we were there, and I have to say, seeing  my husband as such a competent fix-it man was pretty hot. 
• We watched an edited version of The Terminator. I have to say, I'm not sure what they took out, but I was expecting a little more from such an iconic movie. 
• CB loved her cousins. She didn't have much interaction with baby H (who was less than a week old and a little bundle of newborn boy perfection) but she and SN (her cousin who is 11 days older than she is) had a grand old time making faces at each other and trying to suck on each other's hands, and her older cousin NK was just delightful with her. She'd come up to her and say, "I love you shirt and your shoes and your pants!" Or she'd say, "I'm going to go and eat an orange!" She'd always get right down in her face to talk to her, without looking at whoever was holding her. It was so stinking cute. 

NK didn't seem to be afraid of Uncle Eric's mustache.

Best friends!

• We had some family pictures taken, and I'm excited to see how they turned out. I know for a fact that CB was turned sideways for all of one set because the sun was in her eyes, but she looked for some of them. 
• We went to our favorite Lubbock store, Hester's Books, and the whippet who lives there came to say hello to CB. She was not upset by this. When we left, the dog watched us through the window, and Eric decided she was thinking, "I loved that baby," very wistfully.

Hallo, doggie!

• One of my favorite moments of the whole trip involved the first time Eric's grandpa held CB. He wouldn't take her because he said babies always cried when he held them. We finally convinced him, she was happy as could be, and I watched him feeling her little fingers and toes and brushing his face against her soft little head. A little while later, Eric's mom was holding her and Papa came and said, "You need to go and eat some cobbler. I guess I'll just have to hold the baby." Then he danced around the room with her and hummed. It was so sweet. 

Instant friends.

• Somehow, CB and SN synchronized their schedules. They went to sleep at the same time each night and woke up at the same time each morning. Now if only CB had napped as well as her cousin . . . 
• On Thanksgiving day, when CB was feeling a little overwhelmed by all the people, we took her for a walk with Porter and NK. We went down to this park where there were thousands of geese on the shore of a pond, and Porter put NK on his shoulders and ran toward them. They all took off in waves and headed toward the water, and NK giggled in pure joy while Eric followed with CB asleep in the stroller. It was one of those perfect moments that should be in a movie or something. 

They didn't even need an umbrella.