13 & 14 weeks on vacation in TX & Oz

I’ve been so busy relaxing and having fun that I haven’t even had time to write an update ;). (In actuality, yes, I’ve been busy, and yes I’ve had fun and relaxed a little as well, but at-home mom work is at-home mom work wherever Mom & baby are!) As I write, I see the grey and rainy Australian winter through the window, but I’ll do my best to recall the 103 degrees of Matagorda just last week. Sigh. What a waste of a tan, huh? ;)

Mom, Dad, Paul & I drove down just the 4 of us on Monday, July 29^th. That was after a late night after returning from New Orleans and Dad’s passing his massive kidney stone he was told he couldn’t pass so was scheduled for an invasive surgery on Tuesday morning! What a relief on so many levels! No vacation interruption now for the man who cherishes his family beach time. We unpacked everything, which took longer without the big boys, and finally headed down late afternoon to the water. Oh. My. Gosh. Paul discovered the beach! What a beautiful thing to witness. Do you remember learning the beach for the first time? I got to see it through him. He smiled, ear to ear, laughed, chased the waves, ran back and forth to and from them, pointed to all the new, interesting things and made sure we were seeing them too. Wow, how awesome the beach is! After the initial discovery that it’s all there came lots of little discoveries of what he could do with it all … he learned about the sand and how to play in it, wet or dry; he showed us the pelicans and flapped his wings, too; he jumped waves, sat in the surf, shoveled sand into his bucket for a straight hour; he set off on a walk down the beach before pointing to me and Nana to come with him, took our hands, then continued on alone after we turned to come back, ha. It was all so much fun, and I was so sorry that Dylan missed those first moments. Since he loved it so much, though, I wasn’t worried that Dylan wouldn’t get to see any of the good stuff. Peter, Ginny, & Ryan all arrived Wednesday evening, and with them came late nights, games, and good eatin’. Dylan arrived late, late on Friday night/Saturday morning, and, man, was that baby happy to see his Papa! In fact, he stood up in the pack-n-play in our room quickly after he woke, rather than laying, cooing, and playing with his blanket for a while, and pointed to the other person in bed, like – hey, Mama, you see that? It was a lovely reunion. The world was right again. He had grown pretty comfortable with his Nana & Pappy over the 2 weeks, realized that Mama wasn’t going anywhere, had Papa back plus his aunt and uncle who pay so much attention to him! After another full day of waves, sand, and fort-building, he even laid a big kiss on EVERYbody’s lips before going to bed. Gosh, it’s so hard to leave the Gulf coast – what a lovely week.

And what a quick turnaround! We left Matagorda at 10:30am, drove back to Mom & Dad’s, unpacked from the beach, repacked for Australia, and left for the airport at 2:30pm. We knew this was gonna be a long day. We were on our way to LA at 7pm, and then our (first non-United) QANTAS flight took off straight for Melbourne at 11:30pm, that’s 1:30am CST. Paul napped on the domestic flight and had a ball at LAX! He discovered the joys of the conveyor belt walkways, haha, and Dylan lovingly indulged him despite his own fatigue. They ran – fast – the wrong way down the walkway, and Paul just giggled and squealed the whole time. I was so happy to not be alone travelling with Paul during all of this! My belly’s getting a little bigger, and he crawls on me like normal, of course, squishing his little sibling some. Apparently, we think travel is good for babies in utero, since we go overseas whenever I’m pregnant… Now, the Qantas flight – wow. Please don’t make me fly United again transpacific. Please no. Food, good. Attendants, good. Movies, good, bathrooms, good. Uh, sitting behind the wall where there’s an attached bassinet for Paul to sleep for 5 straight hours then another 2 later not lying on our laps? Awesome!! For a minute, I was disappointed until I realized the huge blessing placed before us. I thought 1) we had no movies since the Airbus 380 has individual screens, not several communal, and 2) we had legroom (or lack thereof) like a previous overseas United experience in the first row behind a section partition. We were thoroughly impressed … and now have high expectations! =) Paul did great, really great. Ask any parent flying with kiddos, and if the baby’s fine, parents are beyond fine. Thank you, God! Welcome to your second country, Paul!

Now to the jetlagged life here in Australia. We arrived in Melbourne on Wednesday, after skipping Tuesday, August 6, 2013 altogether and were met by Susan & Gerry at the airport. After a nice breakfast and a quick catch-up, we drove to Mortlake to visit Wayne for a couple of days. That’s where we are now. We got here at about lunchtime, had a meat pie, and put Paul to sleep. We woke him at about 5pm, and he was not happy – he gets his after-nap-behavior from his Tante Ginny ;). He only made it until about 6:30 after snubbing dinner before falling asleep upright in our arms. Saddest little picture, poor thing. We put him down and finished our own dinner … and shortly thereafter, mine came promptly back up. What?! Was it the food? Is it the baby? Is Bee ok? Was it just exhaustion? I crashed not long after Paul until he woke around maybe 3am, and we took him into our bed. He dozed on and off until about 6, when we gave in, got up and made porridge for brekky, which was delicious, given that Paul & I both missed dinner. We took a few walks into the small town here, had a meat pie, played on the playground, walked some more, had lunch at a quaint café – delicious pumpkin soup! – and came back for a good nap. We had to wake Paul again, a little more gently today, but he was still Mad Baby. He snubbed dinner again – who feels like eating when their eyes are closed and it’s 1am body-clock-time? So we put him to bed around 6. We stayed up a little later today – til 8:45! – chatted more, had dinner, then Dylan and I both lost ours =/. Ok, so it wasn’t exhaustion – we’d felt normal all day – nor was it a Bee sensitivity – I only had one funky week with Bee weeks ago now, with very few food aversions. Must have been the food. What an uneasy feeling! Now it’s Friday, we had another oatmeal-heavy breakfast, then took a trip into town for another delicious pie. Paul loved his sausage roll! And Bee’s very pleased to have something so warm and yummy to grab onto. New plan to hopefully get Paul to bed later and sleep later is to stock him full of food during the daytime, whether or not it’s “mealtime”, and give him 2 naps, so he’ll hopefully be up past 6pm. BUT – it is what it is, and we’ll take it as it comes, of course. Jetlag’s hard when you know what’s going on – imagine just thinking your world’s gone wrong.

It’s nap time now, and the week’s plan is as follows: off to Susan & Gerry’s this afternoon and will visit with them and their neighbors (Shalome, Fehraz, and Ahlwan =) ) until next Wednesday, before heading down to Timshel, Shelley, Reuben, & Grace’s.

I’m trying to relax a little and take it easy for Bee, but bed-hopping like we are makes that very difficult. I’m very thankful that Paul likes his baby tent bed =), and that Dylan and I are together through such a hectic couple of weeks.

Here’s to the second trimester!