Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Traveling with a two-month old baby... Not as bad as I thought

Whew.  What a busy week it's been!  I decided to go on a weekend trip with sweet husband to Memphis...  He had to work Friday and Sunday, but we'd have the whole day Saturday together to explore.  Friday's trip up was going to be a grand experiment.  We'd never had Hayden in the car for longer than two hours and the trip to Memphis is four and a half hours (on a good day).  So we "tanked him up" (fed him really well) before we left and set out, praying that Little Dude would do what he always does in the car: sleep.  He did!  Once we got to Memphis, though, he was totally over being in the car-seat, so I laid him down in his stroller and we hit Beale Street after we dropped Mike off at the FedEx Forum for his Grizzlies game.  Well, we kind of hit Beale Street.  I took Hayden to the Hard Rock Cafe and we both enjoyed lunch...  He totally wolfed down his bottle and I found a way to feed him and myself at the same time.  All was right with the world.

Lucky for me I have a couple of really great friends (Brian, above left and Doug, above right) up in Memphis and Hayden and I got to have dinner with them.  I'm a big fan of good barbeque, and Memphis is known for theirs, so the boys took me to Brad's BBQ for some amazing Q.  Saturday Mike took us to Uncle Lou's, a favorite spot of his and his crew's when they go to Memphis to work.  Mike got the chicken, of course, and I tried the "Fatboy" sandwich- think grilled cheese, with ham and turkey, on steroids (see below) and tried their fried pickles, too.  Uncle Lou also makes his own kind of Cool Aid (had to change the spelling for copyright reasons), and it's SOOOO much better than the stuff we drank as kids.  When the guy brought our meals to us, he saw Hayden snoozing away in his car-seat (poor little guy).  He asked what we had ordered for him... I laughed and said a whole fried chicken. 

We left Uncle Lou's and trekked over to Graceland.  Kinda.  I wanted to go, just to say I've been.  Then I found out it's roughly the same cost to put a child through college at Yale than to take two adults to see some crap that Elvis used to own.  And I'm not even a fan of Elvis, so instead of going in, we just did a quick drive-by.  I saw the Lisa Marie, Elvis' big ol' airplane and a big line of people.  We're glad we didn't go.  It was a little too warm, anyway, and I was a bad mommy and forgot Hayden's sunscreen.

Sunday we were fortunate to get a ticket to see the Grizzlies' game against the New Orleans Hornets.  With Friday's win, the Grizzlies clinched a spot in the NBA Playoffs, so everyone was really excited.  Hayden, however, was pretty unimpressed.  He snoozed his way through the entire game.  Pyrotechnics?  No worries.  Roaring crowds?  Not a peep.  All in all, it was a great weekend. 

Sunday night we made our way home, and Hayden, again, slept the entire trip.  We did a quick unpack/repack and hit the road Monday morning to go visit Mike's parents.  My brother- and sister-in-law were down visiting as well with our nephew, Nehemiah, who was totally chomping at the bit to meet his new cousin.  I think that in a couple of years, these two cuties are going to cause some serious mayhem.  We had a small Easter egg hunt for Nehemiah, and Hayden pretended to supervise by sleeping the whole time.  We figure that next year, he'll be a little more interested. 

So I know that I've been bad at keeping this updated, but now that Hayden is two months old (whoa, y'all weren't kidding when you said time flies) and isn't quite as needy, I can take a little more time to update y'all on our adventures.

Sunday, April 3, 2011

Visiting grandparents

My little man is almost seven weeks old!  His Mimi and Bob Bob (my parents) came down to visit for a long weekend to spend some good time with Hayden.  Not only has Mom been an amazing help cleaning up around the house, but she and Daddy have really gotten to bond with Hayden- kinda hard to bond with a 2-3 day old baby when you're vying for your spot to hold the baby with three to six other people, not including the baby's parents!

We were able to watch the University of Kentucky's first Final Four appearance since 1998 together.  Yes, it was a disappointing loss (one point!?), but we're proud of our boys in blue...  And speaking of boys in blue!