Coast to Coast with Carter!

Our little traveler spent Mother's Day weekend in Los Angeles with my parents and had the chance to meet his 91 year old great grandma Stella! His dad was traveling for work, so I decided I was brave enough to fly out west by myself, and I'm so glad I did! He did really well on the flight out there, although he was awake much more than I had anticipated (and hoped!), so I wore myself out keeping him entertained while the unlucky business traveler next to us attempted to type on his laptop. We made it though with hardly any fussing--but oh so many LOUD happy noises, and hopefully that nice young man next to us has not sworn himself off children! We spent the weekend with family and introducing him to the world his mom knew as a baby, and ended the trip with a relaxing flight home, where my mom and dad held him the whole time, and I sipped on wine and read a book. Grandparents are such a blessing :)

Just a couple days after returning to Nashville, we packed our things up again and headed off to Philadelphia for a few days! We brought Taylor with us this time, which made the whole air travel process seem ridiculously easy to me-- although I think Taylor is still recovering from the chaos :)

We spent our mornings wandering around downtown Philly and venturing out to the two most famous Philly Cheesesteak restaurants (Pat's and Geno's), and then we drove out to the suburbs each afternoon to watch our friend "Sus" (a former baseball player of Taylor's from Daytona) play his final series before graduating from Temple University. Carter was a total boy, as usual, and wanted nothing to do with my picnic blanket idea, choosing instead to crawl and roll around in the grass. I lost count of how many pieces of grass and twigs and dirt I pulled out of his mouth-- but he loved it and passed out the second we strapped him into his car seat on the way home each evening. We even made it to Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell on our last afternoon, which I'm sure meant quite a bit to Carter ;)  The flight home was Carter's tenth flight in his short life, and it got a little scary toward the end, with a full on screaming meltdown... which was somehow abated with a bottle and some desperate singing and rocking on the part of his mom.  Taylor and I breathed a huge sigh of relief when that plane touched down! Our first family vacation was a success... although we were all happy to come home! Being able to put Carter in his own crib and then come downstairs for our own TV time is so much more relaxing than putting him in a crib in the corner of a hotel room and then creeping around the room in the dark, running into walls, and whispering for fear of waking our wild little night owl (who will NOT sleep if he thinks he's missing out on anything!).