Road Trip

In early March, Gray and I took a little road trip to Indiana in order to surprise my mom with a 60th birthday party.  While some may think it's crazy to start a 12ish hour road trip alone with a 3 1/2 month old, but really it went pretty well.  Gray is quite a good traveling companion.  We had some moments when he decided he was done with the drive for the day, but all in all, he was wonderful!

We left early on Thursday (the 4th) morning and started making our way to Indiana.  We would drive for 1 1/2 to 2 hours and then stop for an hour to feed and change Gray, and of course to play and be out of the carseat.  This plan worked really well.  When we would stop, Gray would flirt with anyone that would stop to admire him, giving them a big smile.  We were in Ohio when Gray decided that he'd had enough for the day and we spent about 40 minutes in some random trade school parking lot in order to calm him down.  After he forgave me we drove about another 30 or so minutes to Cambridge, Ohio (about an hour east of Columbus) and got a hotel for the night.  Gray was really great in the hotel.  And seemed to really enjoy himself.  I wasn't sure what to expect, this was his first night not sleeping in our bedroom (in his bassinet or our bed) and his first night in the pack-n-play, but he was fabulous.

We started out the next day and Gray wasn't sure he was ready for another day in the car which required us to make much more frequent stops.  We finally got to Auntie Heather's house in the afternoon and had a great time catching up.  Uncle Craig watched Gray so we could make a run to Cone Palace and get some ice cream. Yummm...

The next day we got up and headed into Tipton to set up for the party and I'm so thankful to everyone who helped (Heather, Lynn and Tom, Aunt Sue, Megan, Aunt Mary, etc).  Needless to say, mom was very surprised and when her cousin Beth tried to hand her Gray, she just looked like "nice baby, why are you trying to hand him to me", but then she took a double take and realized that it was Gray, grabbed him and said "That's MY baby." After that, I'm not sure anyone else got to hold him and I don't think she saw me for an hour or more. Oh well, I wasn't the important one anyway.

We spent the rest of the trip spending time with mom and dad and Cameron and then headed back on Tuesday (the 9th). 

On the way back we seemed to have some trouble finding good places to stop and so spent quite a bit of time spending our stops in the car, but we made good time and actually got home late on Tuesday night.  I promised Gray that if we made it in on Tuesday I would not put him in the car at all on Wednesday and I kept my word.  We stayed home, unpacked and relaxed. It was wonderful!

Sue (the nurse) also visited us on Wednesday and we found out that Gray had gained a little weight and is up to 12lbs 6.5oz.