Trip to Bay Area - with (almost) no crying!!

Yesterday we finally did a trip up to the Bay area with the new carseat. Overall, it went GREAT!!

A key ingredient was to leave Paso right around Cam's typical naptime, so he slept almost the entire way up to Morgan Hill (about 2 hours) where our first stop was to visit Auntie Sherry who was playing in a soccer tournament there. Cam got an opportunity to say hello to Mr. Keogh (insider's joke) and he was FASCINATED with him; we're thinking its the beard :) See photo at left: mommy and Cam along with Mr. Keogh. Who, by the way, is Auntie Sherry's husband and is coaching her soccer team. The gals on the soccer team were super nice to Cam, although he was overwhelmed to be the center of attention for the entire team for a bit!

We got there in between games and it was super duper windy, so by the time her last game started, Cam was giving us his "I'm done" signals and we got him back in the car so he could take another short nap while we headed up north to San Jose to visit with Sarah, Charles and their boys, James and Grant, who is just about Cam's age.

Grant is such an easy-going, good natured, happy baby! I'm convinced the two of them will enjoy playing together as they get older. They were both very interested in each other and started to "baby wrestle" when we put them down on a blanket in the backyard - too funny! Each of the boy's bit the other's behind (on the diaper) to keep him from crawling away, which was freakin' hysterical.
It was really nice to visit with Sarah, Charles and their friend Johnny; we all hadn't seen each other since Sarah and I were both pregnant late last summer. We fed Cam some carrots and turkey with veggies, and almost stayed for dinner with everyone, but Cam hit his wall and it was time to get in the car to head south again (thanks again for the invite; next time we'll plan our visit better!!). We battled the setting sun for about an hour (it kept going right into his eyes and we don't have the shade on the Britax that we had on the Graco carseat) but he eventually fell asleep and slept the entire way home, until we had to slow down to turn left onto Rte 46, when he woke up very ticked off. It took a while to settle him down once we got home, but he ended sleeping okay overall last night - woke up around 6:30am, which is a nice change from the 5:15am he's been doing the last few days. We think his ears are still bugging him; we're halfway through the antibiotics, but he's still waking up a lot at night, we think due to the pain, but we're not sure. Hopefully this double ear infection will get cleared up this week.

We're just waking him up from an 1.5 hour nap right now: as you can see he's very happily snuggled up with his buddy George (the Giraffe) and oblivious to the open curtains and bright room. If he doesn't wake up in the next 5 mins, I'll just close the blinds and let him sleep until he does wake up. We're going to see Uncle Steve, Auntie MA and cousin Loretta to give them 3 rose trees from our yard, but that's about all that's planned for today. We'll let you know if we have any other adventures today! Hope everyone is having a great weekend!!

Love,
M + K = C