Have Baby, Will Travel

Kate and I are so blessed to have wonderful, large, extended families to spend our holidays with. Even pre-baby, our collective Christmas celebration has always been somewhat of a circus, deemed affectionately "The Connecticut Christmas caravan." For the last several years, Kate's parents have joined my family in CT for our usual Christmas chaos, starting with Christmas eve at Grandma's house, continuing through to Christmas dinner at Dad's house and finishing with second-Christmas with the step family. This year we also added stops with each of my god parents and a meet-and-greet with Ella and some of my high school friends. Oh, and we went straight from the CT Christmas caravan to my mom's timeshare in Lee, MA. I'm tired just thinking about it, and we haven't even started talking about what it was like to do all of this with a baby.

Being away from home for a week with a 6-week old baby is...interesting. Getting all the baby gear into our sedan is...even more interesting. It's impossible to know what to bring and what to leave behind. Today the baby loves the swing, but tomorrow she might not care about it at all! Do we really need three different swaddles? She might sleep flat in her fold-up bassinet....she might not. To pack or not to pack, that is the question.

The long and the short of it is...we did it! Packing the car was a little bit like playing life sized tetris, but we worked it out. Who needs more than one pair of pajamas anyway? Two pairs of shoes, you say? That's just crazy talk.

Taking a baby who rarely leaves the house in the car for more than her usual 10 minute trip felt like tempting fate, but Ella did ok in the car, though her limit seems to be about 90 minutes. We've officially fed, diapered and burped a baby in a rest stop parking lot, so we feel legit now.

It was great to have so much family support and so many people who were excited to meet Ella. There were many aunties and grandparents and others to hold her and feed her and give her mommies a break! On the other hand, we had just sort of (kind of? maybe.) started to get into a rhythm at home, and then we left. It was a bit unsettling for parents and baby, I think.

We're home now, getting back into some kind of baby management groove and it feels good. I have to admit the Christmas caravan was a bit of a blur, but a happy blur at that. We're already looking forward to next year when we'll ask ourselves... does she really need three stuffed animals? Will she want the jumparoo or the baby walker? Does the pack and play fit in the trunk with the stroller? We need to ask santa for a bigger car...