We've been home for a week and now I'm starting to get us ready to leave town again. Phew - what a month! This is why we decided against getting a Christmas tree; we're only here for 10 days of December and with the baby...it just wasn't worth it. We have a little Norwalk pine decorated, though, and it is quite cute.

So we're leaving town on Friday to head up to Rochester for the holiday. We're staying with my dad but will spend plenty of time at my mom's place. I think we have the schedule all figured out, and we're all excited to be together for Christmas. It's so nice that it doesn't involve a plane trip for us! We think we'll head out as soon as Kate is up on Friday, so hopefully we'll be to Rochester by 2:30 or so. It looks like the day is supposed to be dry all the way up there. The one complication with the trip is that we're driving up two cars, so one of us will be alone with Kate; definitely do-able, but not as easy as if a second parent was around too. My mom is having surgery on the 26th, and at that point Jay and John are going to leave with the girls so that it will just be Claire and I with our mom afterward. Jay decided that he wanted to bring Kate to see Pat and Duane, hence the two car situation. It'll be the first time that Kate and I will be apart for more than just a few hours, and I'm hoping that it'll go ok for Jay. She's very used to him doing all the things that need to be done, but he's never been alone in doing them all for days at a time. Hopefully she'll be fine and just excited to see me when we all get home again. I am quite sure that I'll be excited to see her!

So here I am, getting ready to pack us up once again. The present wrapping is almost completely done, and I did a bunch of laundry yesterday with the hopes that there won't be much more to do before we leave. I have a couple of small errands to run today, and I'm getting my hair cut this afternoon. Tonight the teenager that will visit the cats is coming over to see the set up. Tomorrow will be the actual packing, last minute gathering of stuff, and loading of the cars. Phew!

Kate seems to have caught a cold, and it's producing some pretty disgusting mucus. Normally the thicker stuff is at the end of our colds, but we're starting off with a bang here. I'm going to watch it to make sure it isn't the beginning of an ear infection or something. It just seems strange that the very first day would have such thick, yellow discharge...hmm...

At least it explains last night's horrendousness. Kate went to bed at 6:15 and from 9:00 on woke up every hour to hour and a half. Only twice after I went to bed did either Jay or I get involved, but her constant waking made for an unpleasant night of sleep. Needless to say, her sleep wasn't very good either, and she took an almost 3 hour nap this morning. I let her do so because of her lack of sleep and the fact that she has to go get her flu shot booster at 3 today. (The first time kids under 9 get a flu shot they have to have 2 - how crappy is that?!?) I called the doc and they said with no fever or cough she's fine for the shot. 3 is turning out to be a pretty bad time for us to be somewhere; I'm quite sure that she will prefer to be asleep at that time. I guess the good thing is that she can just crash and get through the pain of the shot after we get home.

Anyway, here's to a fun weekend full of yucky snot...lets hope that's all it ends up being!

OK, that first post was getting long, so I figured I'd separate topics a bit. I mentioned that poor Kate was totally sleep deprived in Seattle - between all of our outings and the excitement that generated and having to sleep in a pack n play for a week in the same room as her parents...man oh man, this kid was tired. She only slept through the night 2 times while we were there. Remember I had said that she woke at 4 two mornings in a row and slept in our bed? Well, it only continued. Saturday after moving her from Rick and Amy's (we left ~11) she wouldn't go to sleep in the hotel. I ended up putting her in our bed from the get go (around midnight) so that the child would get some rest. Sunday night was the worst, though. She had been sleeping fine in her pack n play, and again woke up in the middle of the night (I think around 2). I brought her to our bed again, and while she was happier, she couldn't fall asleep. Jay is a serious snorer, and he was really going at it that night. I kept pushing him, trying to get him to roll over and stop making so much noise, but nothing woke him enough to get him to quit. After an hour and some change, I moved the pack n play to the living room, thinking that just removing her from our room might help. It did - for about 30 min. When she woke that time I said, fine, we'll sleep on the couch. So we did - great for Kate, really crappy for me. In my sleepy haze it didn't occur to me to have Jay move to the couch for some reason...Monday night Kate and I slept in the bed while Jay slept on the couch, and everyone got a decent night of sleep.

But that was nothing compared to being home. Kate was so excited to get in her crib Tuesday night, and she slept like the dead. She was in her crib around 11:45 and she didn't make a peep all night. I had set an alarm for 8 am thinking that that was a reasonable compromise time for the time zone adjustment. At 8 am, though, I thought, there is no way we're all getting up now, and went back to sleep. At 10am I woke up and said, shoot, now it's 10. At that point I decided that Kate just needed her sleep, so I didn't wake her, and she ended up getting up at 10:30. So yesterday's naps were pretty screwed up. Her first nap was from 1:15 - 2:45, and then she went to bed again (in her pjs, after a bath) at 6:15. I didn't know if that was going to be a nap or bedtime, considering that her body thought it was 3:15 but it was totally dark out. She ended up getting up at 9, and we let her play quietly until ~10:30. She woke up at 5 this morning but after a little help from me and some time by herself she went back to sleep (but I wasn't able to go back to sleep, hence the early morning blogging). I'm going to wake her at 7:30 in an attempt to get some normalcy back to our schedule today...

We finished up our fantastic trip to Seattle on Tuesday afternoon. We left Seattle a little before 2pm and walked in our door at 11:30 - 6 1/2 hours, not too shabby, especially considering the storms that were happening in the midwest. Gotta love a direct flight!! The flight was fine. Kate fell asleep shortly after we took off and slept for about an hour; I had crossed my fingers for a full 2 hour nap, but at least she slept a little. She was up the rest of the trip, and I think she had a good time. For a little while she and I walked up and down the aisle, saying hi to everyone. She was getting restless in our row and since she now loves to walk...It was cute to see her visiting everyone, and across the board people were delighted to see her. She did a pretty good job with the walking, too, considering that we were ascending a little at the time. Going uphill wasn't too hard, but it took a few steps - and falls - going downhill before she got the hang of it, and then there was no stopping her! She's definitely a walker now. She rarely crawls, and her stability on her feet is quite good. Anyway, the plane was fine, and she charmed the pants off of the passengers and crew once again. She is, after all, quite darling.

The end of our trip was great. Saturday was nice; we had lunch with Bill and Melissa, and Kate was thrilled about their dog. We brought her back to the hotel for her nap, and that didn't go very well. Ah, I think this is when I blogged last - she took forever to go down, and then only slept a little over an hour. She woke up crying hysterically, and there wasn't much that we could do for her. Eventually we put in her Blue's Clues DVD that I had gotten from the library for such emergency situations, and that calmed her down. At the time we thought it was her teeth, but I think she was just so sleep deprived at that point that she couldn't handle it. Poor baby. We went to Rick and Amy's for a yummy dinner and a great visit, and happily Kate went to bed there just fine.

Sunday morning we went to Carmen's for brunch after Kate's nap. We didn't get there until nearly 11, and I felt bad about that considering that everyone was getting together because we were in town. It was a lot of fun to see all of the kids in one place, and getting the adults together was great, too. It was pretty strange to see us all with kids - we all went to each other's weddings, so to have been together for so many years and then move as a group into the next stage...it was fun to see. The kids, of course, had a great time. Kate took her afternoon nap at Carmen's house, and we left around 3. We met Mike and Melinda a bit later and went out to a nearby burger joint. Kate wasn't all that interested in sitting still and eating, so I spent most of the meal entertaining her. Oh well, I guess that's how it is with kids sometimes.

Monday Kate and I met my friend Jess for lunch and then went to a mom's group that we used to attend with Meghan and Owen. The timing of that group wasn't great, so Kate and I left early to put Kate down for a nap at Meghan's house. Ha! When Meghan and Owen got there an hour and a half later Kate still wasn't asleep and I had conceded the point to her. Once Owen was there - forget it. The kids played and we all had a substantial snack, and then we put the kids in strollers to go get coffee. By this time it was almost 4, and Kate fell asleep in the stroller a few minutes after we got to the coffee shop. We had our coffee and then headed back to Meghan's. I left Kate in the stroller in a darkened room, and Meghan and I hung out while the kids slept. Kate woke up extremely unhappy to be in her winter coat (which she hates) in her stroller, so we left there in a bit of a hurry (we were on our way to get Jay anyway). With that screaming exception, Monday was yet another great day. We had hoped to have dinner with my uncle that night, but that didn't work out, so we grabbed chicken teriyaki and I spent the evening packing.

So, after all that fun, leaving wasn't too hard. I think over the week I just came to accept the situation for what it is and to recognize that we can visit anytime. I'm kind of excited to think that our kids will get to know another area of the country, and I feel really lucky that Jay and I have such a wonderful place to go see friends. A scene in the airport sealed the deal, though. At security we saw a couple with a little baby - probably 6 weeks or so - saying goodbye to the baby's grandma. The grandma was so upset and trying to hold it together while they said goodbye, but once she was in line the poor woman was really struggling. Her daughter was watching, holding her little baby and crying, and it was all too familiar. We don't live just down the street from our parents, but seeing them will never again involve so much effort (and money), and that is absolutely worth the sacrifice of leaving Seattle and our wonderful friends.

OK, to avoid issues I'm writing this offline this time - good thing I am, too, since I can't get onto our hotel's network at the moment. Hmmm...

Our trip on Monday went well. You've probably heard about the huge storm that happened out here that day (the second wettest day in Seattle's history, nearly 5" of rain), and between that storm and the system in the midwest our flight was an hour delayed in arriving in Seattle. We actually left DC a few minutes early (a little before 6), but we touched down late because we were fighting 100mph+ headwinds across a lot of the country. The flight itself was pretty uneventful. Kate managed to sleep for almost three hours of the nearly 7 on the plane. She fell asleep at 7:30 and I thought, this is a wonderful thing. But then she woke up two hours later and just couldn't fall back asleep even though she was exhausted. She was up from 9:30 to almost 12 (EST) before falling asleep again for the last 50 min of the flight. Then we woke her to get her off the plane, and by the time she was asleep in our hotel it was 11:45 PST. Needless to say she just completely zonked - and so did we. She managed to sleep until 6:15 yesterday, so that wasn't too bad. Bedtime was a little after 7 last night, but this morning she was up at 5:30. Hopefully tomorrow she'll sleep a little later than that! I'm pretty pooped right now, and I think I'm going to take a nap for a bit while she's sleeping too.

Yesterday was a nice day. Kate and I took Jay to work in the morning, and a couple of hours later we went over to see Melinda and Stella. (She is so cute!!!!) We hung out all day, and then Jay and Mike joined us for dinner. I managed to keep Kate up until they arrived, but she was really scared of Mike for some reason. We've never seen that kind of reaction from her before; maybe she was just too tired to handle another new person. I put her to bed while we ate and hung out, and then we left at 10:30 (much later than I had anticipated, hence why I'm so tired) - we were just having so much fun. Kate did fine being woken and driven back to the hotel and went right to bed again. That was a relief because that's going to happen a few times while we're here.

We found out this morning that our hotel has a huge continental breakfast and omelette bar, so we had breakfast together before taking Jay to work. Kate took her morning nap (a long one, 2 1/2 hours), and then we went to Microsoft for lunch and to see some of Jay's co-workers. Now we're back at the hotel for another nap. Once she's up we'll head out to see Meghan and Owen. I'm going out to dinner with Carmen and Allison tonight. So much fun!

Our hotel is great. We have a two room suite - a full living room with a little kitchnette and a totally separate bedroom. It's so nice to let Kate have the room to herself while she's napping, and I know Jay is going to appreciate it this evening while I'm at dinner.

Being back here is fantastic but a little hard. It's pretty surreal to be visiting somewhere that you know inside and out, especially when you don't know much about where you do actually live. We've only had 6 months in VA compared to the 7 years we were here, so it's not that surprising, but this really still feels like it should be home. Between the familiarity of the surroundings and having all of our friends here...it's just hard to know we're leaving again in a few days. But I refuse to be sad and will just enjoy every minute of our time here.

Kate is asleep, Jay is doing some work, and I'm just relaxing. Ah, the beauty of a calm departure. I packed everything that could be packed last night, and now we're just waiting to get the baby monitor and Kate's blanket after she gets up. Our flight is in 5 1/2 hours.

So I'm sure now that traveling with an older child is more challenging than with a younger baby. The stress of the tiny babies is the worry of forgetting some type of gear, not having enough diapers and changes of clothes. After all, you're still just in that keeping-the-baby-alive stage of parenting. Now I have the added stress of knowing that Kate likes and dislikes things and she does get frustrated when she's unhappy or bored. So the trick now has been to pack as many books and toys as she 'needs' without going nuts with the volume. Easier said than done! All of that is on top of the making sure all the gear is going...ay.

So we ended up needing another bag, which in retrospect isn't that surprising. Clothes for cold weather are bulky, and Jay and I always brought our big and small suitcases when we visited family at the holidays - it's no surprise that Jay and I plus Kate couldn't fit into the same space. Happily Claire keeps her suitcase here, so a quick call for permission to use it and I was able to finish up with no delay. So we're checking a big suitcase, two small suitcases, the duffel (booster seat, toys, and food stuff), and the pack-n-play. We're bringing Kate's car seat onto the plane, so we'll be dragging her stroller, car seat, diaper bag, my purse, and Jay's computer bag through the airport. Ay. None of this compares to the scale of our move in June, and that went fine so hopefully this will too. I wonder if they'll make me take of Kate's shoes at security...

After Kate's bath last night I trimmed her hair and it is SOOOO cute! I just trimmed up the ends to even it out, and she has this little bob now. Oh, she's darling. The hair from the top of her head never fell out after birth (and you know how much hair she had!), and that includes her crown, so that hair is really long now. It's been kind of laying over the hair on the back of her head that grew in (after she rubbed it off at 5 months), but that birth hair has been longer than the new hair, so there's always this little craziness at the bottom. No more. I trimmed it up and now it's even. That's the first hair cutting I've ever done, so I hope it actually looks ok.

OK, I'm off to finish up the blanket I made for the airplane. Every time Kate sees it she gets super excited - it's just a small version of her pink (essential!) blanket. I hope she likes it enough to sleep well on the plane tonight.