Road Trip
We’ve been busy lately…lunch with co-workers and their babies, movies, vaccinations, and Dominic’s first big road trip. Not to mention his first tub baths (which he really seems to enjoy!)
After the baby shower, we shipped copies of all the shower pictures to our friend Lauren, who secreted herself in an upstairs room for months and scrapbooked…like the wind. She even got comments from people watching her “baby cam” saying “what the heck are you doing?” Early in August, we received the scrapbook, which really knocked us out. She did a fantastic job on it, and really captured the fun we had at the shower, with terrific photos of friends, family and coworkers…it was a great party, and now we’ve got a great album to remember it by. With luck, Andrea can journal some comments on the album pages before Lauren comes out here in September. 
Andrea’s discovered “Mom Movies,” a fun activity put on by our local deluxe moviehouse. Every other Thursday, they have Gymboree in for some pre-movie games, then show lighter fare in less-dark theaters at lower-than-earsplitting volume, designed to be seen by parents with their kids. She went a couple weeks ago (saw “Must Love Dogs” or some other such chickflick), and had a grand time. Dominic slept through just about the whole thing.
A few weeks back, Andrea hosted an all-day lunch and baby visit session for a couple of coworkers and their new babies. Kiela (and son Colin) and Sherri (and daugher Emma) came by, had a great lunch, brought tasty brownies, and generally bonded. Then on the 18th, Kiela returned the favor hosting another mom’s lunch…in Warrenton (Andrea’s longest trip alone with Dominic, and he did just great!)
The next day, though, Dominic took an even longer trip, as we ventured to the wilds of Chesapeake, Virginia to visit with my sister Laura and her family (and in particular, her children Brianna and Matthew). Ever since I’d returned from Las Vegas, I’ve been a little concerned about our Explorer (it just didn’t sound right), and we couldn’t get it into the dealer in time, so we decided to try and make the trip in our new Prius. Amazingly, we were able to fit everything into it with room to spare. This includes a full-sized stroller, suitcase and toiletries bag, gifts, pillows & other baby accessories, snacks for the trip down, and of course the three of us. The only things in the back seat were the suitcase and diaper bag — not bad for such a small car. And we averaged 48 MPG on the trip, even though we weren’t trying particularly hard to drive efficiently.
The drive itself wasn’t bad…though we still can’t find the right way to get down I-95. Even leaving at noon, we sat in traffic for over an hour between Potomac Mills and Fredricksburg. That’s like 25 miles in one hour. Fortunately, we may have found a good alternate route on the way back, so we’ll have to give that a shot when we go to the beach next month. It was certainly a longer ride, having to stop every 2-3 hours for a 45-minute feeding / changing exercise…fortunately, it wasn’t raining, or it really would have been a challenge.
Once at Laura & Geoff’s house, we had a grand time. Matthew is a huge baby, only two months older than Dominic but almost as large as a one-year-old. And Brianna is cute, as always, and learning the proper team to root for (saying “Go Redskins!” with a really mischevious smile to her Eagles-loving father). Andrea and Laura did a bunch of shopping, I did some quick geocaching (it was too hot to do much, though), and we all enjoyed a great dinner at Red Robin. I also spent some time troubleshooting their computers, and though I couldn’t manage to recover files from their trashed hard drive, I did get the last of the orange juice out of their ant-infested laptop (!!).
Finally, just a couple of days after we returned, Dominic had his two-month checkup. He got his first vaccinations (and wouldn’t leave Andrea’s arms for the rest of the day), and has now reached the upper bounds of the growth charts. He was measured at 24 inches long and 14.25 pounds, almost double his birth weight. Naturally, we’re thrilled he’s healthy, but a little concerned that he’s going to out-do his cousin.
