Baaaaaaaaack

You know how sometimes you go on vacation and even though travel can be stressful it's kind of nice to get away from things and then you get back and the house isn't clean and the cat has puked on the sofa and you know you have a ton of emails to get to and there are probably bills in the post and you're exhausted from the plane ride and you kind of wish you could break a limb so you could have an excuse for not dealing with it all or maybe just go back on vacation?

Yeah. That's kind of where I've been since we got back.

The trip was mostly excellent. The Hatchling charmed the pants off of all her southern relatives (it's hot there! they don't need pants!), my accent came back in record time, we ate fabulous barbecue, seafood (mmm ... fried catfish), southern breakfasts (grits!) and I brought home two bags of gen-you-wine boiled peanuts. (Most Yankees think this is the weirdest snack ever invented, but those of us blessed with Georgian heritage know that it is teh awesome, especially when consumed hot out of the boiler and chased with an ice cold coke.) We took a day to visit St. Simon's island and showed the Hatchling the Atlantic ocean for the first time. (She thought it was pretty cool.) It was really good to see my grandmother, aunt and assorted cousins, and the weather was gorgeous.

The plane trips to and fro, however, were another story. We've flown with the Hatchling before: once when she was 3 months old and once at 5 months old. Both of those trips, while not exactly relaxing, were pretty successful. The Hatchling slept or nursed through most of the ride and she was still small enough to fit in a sling. This time, not so much. As a strapping 13 month old, the Hatchling is no longer at all interested in staying within the confines of her parents' laps for the duration of a 2 hour plane ride. Also, did I mention the "strapping" part? It's one thing to share your seat with a little bitty baby, but it is something else entirely to share it with a squirmy, always active, 97th-percentile-for-height-and-weight TODDLER. There was simply not enough room for the both of us. God help us, I think the next flight we take (in July) we're going to have to shell out for a third seat.

And then there was the puking. Seems that the Hatchling is prone to a little airsickness. Or, well - it was a "little" on the way out, and more like "ohmigod I think she just barfed up more than her own body weight" on the way back. As the primary holder of the baby, I was the recipient of most of the ralphing, but poor Mr. Squab was stuck trying to clean us up while apologizing profusely to the woman who was unfortunate enough to be seated next to us. Not the way you really want to end a vacation. Especially when you add on the barfing in the car on the way home and the almost once-a-day barfing at home for the next four days.* Mostly on me.

So, to sum up: being back in the southeast - fabulous. Getting there and back - brain-searingly awful. Recovery from the trip - still in progress. Photos will be posted soon. Hope you all had a delightful Memorial Day weekend.

*Obviously, the way home was more than just airsickness.