A Spring Excursion

In the spirit of being an adventurous mom, I decided to take a spur of the moment trip up to the Seattle/Tacoma area last week. After my sister's visit to Portland, Dylan and I rode back up to Seattle with her and her 17-month-old. (As you might imagine, it was kind of a long car ride.) We stayed with her for several days, then stayed with my parents in Tacoma for a couple of nights, and then Chris drove up to join us and we stayed with his parents for Easter weekend. It was a nice way to do the trip because we didn't wear out our welcome anywhere by staying too long, and everybody got a chance to spend time with Dylan. Since between us Chris and I have 4 parents and 5 siblings living in the Seattle area right now, it's hard not to feel stretched thin when everybody wants to see us. A week was a good amount of time.

Some highlights from the trip:

On monday, Char's friend and fellow teacher Colleen stopped by with her newborn for a play date. Colleen has a six-week old (born 4 weeks early), and she's been having trouble establishing breastfeeding. Because of my own struggles with that, I was able to teach her some strategies I learned from my lactation consultant, and Colleen was able to successfully breastfeed without a nipple shield for the first time! She even repeated it during the visit, and called the next day to say they were continuing to have success. That was really validating for me, especially as I am still thinking of focusing on doula work in my practice. During this same playdate, Dylan rolled over for the first time! He even did it from back to front, which is supposedly the harder way. We tried to get him to do it again with no success.

On wednesday, my cousin Casey came to visit at Char's house with 3 of her 4 kids, including her newborn, Addy. I never get to see her, so that was a really fun visit, especially since this was our first chance to talk since I became a mom.


On Saturday, Chris and I were able to visit our friends Brandon and Kate and their new girl, Lucy Jane. We spent hours at their place and had a great time. The kids hit it off famously.


Coolest of all: Dylan started rolling over again at Brandon and Kate's house. And this time we got it on video:


But I'll tell you I was really happy to get home yesterday. It's been a long week.