Miles has discovered his tongue and loves showing it off. It’s been his favorite thing to do lately and has been cracking us up. He’s a pretty expressive little guy, as you can see here. (Click on photo to view larger if you wish.) Here’s Miles after one of our long walks last week. It’s hilarious to see him fall asleep in the carrier because he’s like a rag doll with his arms and legs swinging when John walks. BTW, this hat was purchased by Grandma long before we knew he was going to be a boy. It’s a perfect hat for walks though because it covers his ears, so for now, he gets to wear a girlie hat with ducks and flowers on it, poor guy. My dad stops by once a week or so to get a Miles fix. Miles seems to be starting to prefer either me or John, so he has been starting to cry when other people hold him, which really isn’t that much fun. Some people might call it being spoiled, but I say it’s just another part of him learning about his environment. Hopefully, like the car seat aversion (more on that later) this too, shall pass. On this particular day though, my dad got to hold him for a bit without tears. Friday night John and I went to meet up with some very dear friends of ours that I used to work with for a BBQ. My friends Cristi and Steve have two BEAUTIFUL children and we had fun snapping some pics. They are just as sweet on the inside as they are on the outside. Here’s Tristan and Sydney in action… Tristan is quite the athlete, he’s hanging out on the swing set here. Mmmmm, Syd thinks the bucket is tasty. 😉 I WISH this picture would have been framed better, but look at little Syd helping John change Miles’ diaper. She is going to be four in July and LOVES, LOVES, LOVES babies. She is such a good little mommy! When I brought Miles in the car seat in side, she immediately started to help get him out of his car seat. She makes my heart melt. She told us that evening that she wishes she had 100 babies. So cute! She had already put her baby doll to bed that evening, but they had matching outfits on. Next time I’ll have to get a picture of that. Miles hung in there for a bit before dinner, but slept the rest of the evening while John and I got some very rare adult socializing in. It was an awesome night. Thanks Cristi and Steve for hosting!

Yesterday John and I took our first road trip to Chicago. A friend of ours lost her mother rather quickly to cancer and the memorial service was this weekend. We definitely wanted to be there to support her, so we headed out on our first excursion with Miles. I was pretty nervous about it as Miles has been in a phase where he hates the car seat. The trip took a lot of preparation, planning ahead and baby gear, but we did it and it went really well. Miles was great on the trip. The only slip up was that we should have taken a break before we got on the toll road right before Chicago. He was still asleep and we, being rookie parents, didn’t realize we would be pushing our luck to go further. Well, he had been in the car seat for well over three hours and bless his heart, when a cell phone call woke him up, he was, understandably wet and hungry. At this point, we were stuck in memorial day weekend traffic with no site of an exit. So I whipped out a freezing cold bottle of expressed milk I had brought and bless him, he drank it in his car seat. For a baby who always has his milk warmed for him and propped up in a pillow on my lap, he was quite a trooper.

The memorial service, which was beautiful, was packed, so we were in an overflow room, which worked pretty well. People told us that Miles won the good baby award, which made us feel really good. We just watched him like a hawk and reacted to his needs when he asked for them. (This is where being ADD like me and John comes in handy as with a baby, your focus has to be split.) It’s crazy, we arrived with a baby who had been just fed and changed, but during the service John and I both had to take him in the restroom three times to change and feed him. Go figure!

During one of my restroom breaks with Miles where I was feeding him, there was a grandmother in there with a baby a couple months older. He was fussy and the grandmother was trying her best to soothe the baby, but I could tell the baby was hungry and being rocked wasn’t going to cut it. Another grandmother came in the bathroom to try to help, but he just kept crying louder and louder. I don’t know where the mother was, but she didn’t leave the grandmas with a bottle. They looked at me in desperation and said, “I wish we had a bottle for this one.” (I was nursing Miles at the time.) Something very interesting hap pend as I sat and listened to that baby cry. A year ago, I would have been annoyed at hearing a baby cry like that and impatiently wondered where the baby’s mother was. Now, I felt like crying and seriously almost considered offering to nurse that baby, who was now beyond crying and in a meltdown. It felt awful to be able to feed Miles but not help that baby. As soon as Miles was done, I got out of the restroom and I felt sick to my stomach sitting in the overflow room hearing that baby cry as the grandmothers floundered. That baby eventually gave up and stopped crying and after the service, got his bottle, but that ache in my heart I felt when he cried stuck with me all afternoon. It’s amazing how being a mother has changed me. There are people who always have that maternal urge, like my friend Amy Conner who children just naturally flock to her. But this is a whole new world to me now and it’s an amazing how my eyes and heart have expanded like they have.

The rest of the day John and I juggled baby gear and duties as we weaved our way between the masses of people at the funeral home and then at our friend’s extremely elegant home for the post funeral gathering. We would have liked to have stayed longer, but this day was really just about supporting out friend so we headed home after the gathering. Miles ended up being so good for everything and was even great in the car seat. We had probably about 15-20 min. of crying on the way home before he fell asleep, but for the most part Miles and I had a good time in the backseat while John played his new role of “Jeeves” the chauffeur.

Driving home we had some of the hardest and darkest rain we have seen in a long time. It made the long drive even longer and was pretty scary. (Very scary for me as I’m a new paranoid mom.) We ended up getting home around midnight and Miles went right from car seat to crib and slept the rest of the night.

So we are ready for our next road trip. We are hoping to get to Ann Arbor soon for a little getaway. The bonus of that will be to get Miles swimming for the first time. We haven’t been to Ann Arbor since our “babymoon” this past fall and we have always looked forward to the day when we can take our little baby up there for the trip as well.

This is a super long blog, so I’ll shush now! Have a great memorial Day everybody. Be safe, there are some NUTTY drivers out there!