May Week Away - Part 1

Patrick had an internal Exxon conference to attend in Baltimore, so we decided to use it as an excuse to visit a lot of friends & family and play tourists. I will be honest in saying that it is exhausting taking care of both kids on the road solo for three reasons - 1. Austin has developed extreme attachment issues and goes hysterical when I'm not in line-of-sight, 2. Amelia is jumping into good ole' terrible threes where defiance and unkindness to her friends is the norm, and 3. They don't sleep well all in one room. So 5am wake-ups and no afternoon naps were routine for us along with every-hour-wakings by one or both children all night long.

That said, I would do it again in a heartbeat for the memories made over the week.

We started by dropping Daddy off in Baltimore and driving to visit some friends from NVA who moved to MD shortly after we moved. 

Playing an game with Ms. Carrie

Watching a sign language video. Amelia kept getting closer and closer to Joey. He fell asleep.

Breakfast is always more fun with a friend! Josh showed Austin how to improve his crawling skills.

On Tuesday, we drove over to Amy's house for a day-long playdate. Amy has Ethan and Aiden (4 months).

I stole lots of cuddles with this little man (with Austin right next to me most of the time).

Picnic lunch on the deck

Snuggles on the patio

Sand & Water table!

Since we knew naps were not going to happen, we tried a video. It lasted approximately 5 minutes - when Amelia instigated bothering her friends who had been content to watch. It was downhill from there.

Some time riding outside

While Joey went to a birthday party, Ethan and Amelia had ice cream cones, played with playdough, painting and coloring. Amy pulled out all the fun activities. Here they're watching a video of themselves from just over a year ago when Amy kept Amelia for our NJ house-hunting trip. Fun times.

It was sad that our time together was so short, but we mamas did get time commiserating on the difficulties of mothering, comparing notes on successes and failures, and encouraging each other to keep on. That is so good for my heart.

Carrie's house is conveniently close to my grandparent's home in Maryland so I took the kids to visit their Great Grandmother & Great Grandfather. It was their first time to meet Austin and he performed his new crawling trick and gave out lots of free grins.

Great Grandma knew that their community bus would be a hit with Amelia, so we rode it to and from the cafe for lunch. Amelia talked about it from the moment it was offered until she saw her daddy later that evening. It was the highlight of her day.

Going to get on the bus.

Waiting on the bus.

It was a short visit but I'm so glad that we were able to visit and the kids had time with their family.

The rest of our time on Wednesday was spent getting checked into the hotel, waiting on poor hotel staff to get us a pack-n-play which happened too late for a nap to occur, swimming in the hotel pool, and venturing out for dinner in Baltimore alone. We ended with a fun first - bath time together with the duckies a kind bellhop gave the kids.

Catching Up

After the plague in our home, it took quite a few days for us to get back to "normal", with just a bit of time before we hit the road traveling. But we made every effort to get outside as much as possible, still keeping mostly quarantined so Austin wouldn't spread the HFM virus to anyone else.

The rain only washed the horizontal surfaces of our paint, so we had fun scrubbing it off one afternoon.

Amelia is checking out the bucket here. It actually took some cajoling to convince her to reach in and grab the brushes.

Locking the brushes together via bristles was also a great way to play.

Austin's new trick

If she gets ahold of a long scrap of fabric, she often requests for you to wrap her hand like Mommy does for boxing. 

 Austin's mobility makes Amelia much more interested in playing with him.

Blueberries and raspberries!

He loves the game of knocking the books over one-by-one.

Patrick's sweet Mother's Day gift to me was to watch the kids for most of the weekend while I did all our planting in the front and newly-created back beds. I didn't get any photos since my hands (and Amelia's!) were covered in dirt for most of the time, but it did sprinkle for a bit and we had fun playing and planting in the rain, as well as the rest of the day. Thanks to a great father who would keep them entertained and feed us so I could work outside.

Amelia LOVES when I put Austin in the swing next to her. She thinks its awesome.

By the end of the week, we met a friend at the Crayola Factory again and had fun doing art projects all morning.

Austin even had a little time to play.

On Sunday morning I took Amelia out on a mommy-daughter date to a diner for breakfast. We ordered waffles and lots of breakfast meat (since that is what she likes!)

Date selfie

Afterwards we ran to Home Depot for a quick errand, but she asked to sit on the tractor lawn mowers. Easy to please. Unfortunately, no fork lifts in operation on a Sunday morning.

Carolyn's Birthday Celebration

After coming down for my birthday extravaganza, Carolyn asked Patrick to help her plan a fun weekend to celebrate her 30th during the first weekend in May. Patrick came up with a long list of things he'd love to do in Boston, and from that list Carolyn planned a great series of birthday events. Although the kids were sick (and unbeknownst to us, we were sick too), I flew up to Boston along with another college friend to join with Carolyn to celebrate.

We started the birthday activities with lots of girl talk and manicures and pedicures at a lovely spa. Then we headed into downtown Boston to meet up with Carolyn's local friends for high tea at the fancy Langham Hotel. When Carolyn booked the reservations for high tea, we didn't know that the hotel was hosting a fashion show for Ted Baker London (don't worry - I didn't know who it was until I looked them up later). So not only did we get to be all fancy, but we also were able to look at fancy clothes and handbags.

They set up the high tea in their lobby with the "runway" as a giant circle around the tables. It did make getting up to go the bathroom kinda comical.

There was a show photographer who took photos of our group as well as the other guests and posted them on the Langham Hotel's facebook page. When they surprised Carolyn with a birthday cupcake (after we had spent 2+ hours eating and drinking!), he caught it on camera. The hotel pianist even played "Happy Birthday" in the middle of the fashion show - pretty nifty!

(note the 30th birthday button! It made a reappearance!) 

After the tea, we spent some time walking around Boston and enjoying the really mild afternoon. Then we headed to a Murder Mystery Dinner Theatre. It was interesting to have all the actors mingling with the crowd and the improv comedy was funny. They picked on many of the attendees and spotlighted the birthdays being celebrated, as most of the groups were there to celebrate a birthday.

It was such a short time before I headed back to the airport, back to our sick house. But it was such a fun weekend to celebrate a dear friend's birthday and meet all of her other friends.

Cesspool of Disease

That's what Patrick has been calling our home for the last 2 weeks and it hasn't ended yet. I know it is typical for a family to pass around germs within itself, but this plague has gone on longer than expected. However, we have seen God's mercy throughout the ordeal and are grateful for it.

It all started with my stomach bug in Texas, which God allowed me to recover from enough to travel home without issues, just to relapse on the night we arrived home. Then Patrick followed up with the same bug while Amelia started running a fever. Turns out that she caught the hand, foot, & mouth virus that is mild but untreatable....except she had a more severe version where it spread all over her body. So we did the best to keep her comfortable while both kids came down with nasty colds. Patrick recovered enough to take care of them while I flew to Boston for a long weekend, but we both ended up catching their colds. Then Patrick starts to run a fever with more severe cold symptoms (Austin had been running one off and on but he also cut another tooth in Texas so its cause was uncertain). Austin breaks out with HFM sores and Patrick travels to VA for work, realizing that he has the HFM sores too. We pray that the colds and HFM will clear up and we can start enjoying the spring weather that has arrived in the northeast!

God's provision in all this has been so apparent - allowing Patrick and I to be at our worsts at different times so we could care for the kids. A church friend running to the store for us when we returned from Texas and needed gatorade and toast. Unlimited steamy showers and easy access to medicines. Oatmeal baths and popsicles. Many times throughout the last two weeks, Patrick and I have reminded ourselves of how these "1st world problems" are nothing compared to the sickness and troubles that families all over the globe and even in our own country experience daily without the relief options.

For some reason, she never got the sores in her mouth, just all around it

 I came home from Boston with a pedicure; so Amelia asked for one too. Not many complaints about her feet hurting after this.

Since the HFM virus is super contagious for weeks (even though they tell you to go back to school/work after a few days), we're opting to stay quarantined for longer to avoid sharing. So painting the deck got us outside for a little bit.

Even sick Daddy got to painting.

We did this a few times this week.

We're watching this boy carefully - he's going to crawl any day now. He's getting up on his knees and rocking as well as planking. Not to mention refusing to sleep so he can rock/plank in the crib.

He figured out how to clap this week and now he does it all the time. He'll even be fussing and then suddenly stop and clap and laugh at himself. It's taken days for me to catch it on camera.

With the tooth he cut in Texas, he has all four top teeth descending down. Let's just say the teething, combined with the cold and HFM have made for a needy little boy. But you'd never know it from these smiles.

Yup, the only way to truly score is to put your hand all the way through to the bottom. Even if that means knocking the toy and yourself over every. single. time.