Categorizing Things is Overrated

Babies, Skeletons, and Beaches

October 6, 2019 /

I have had such fun these last four weeks, I just can’t even. First of all, my sister, her husband, and her baby came to visit. You may generally know that I have *a lot* of sisters, and it is difficult to keep track of who is which and which is who, I know. This is the middle sister – she has a baby who was born in February 2019, which made him 7 months old at the time of the visit. He is a very good-natured baby – free with his smiles, very rarely fussy, happy to sit and play with his toys all by himself on a blanket and also delighted when your face appears in his field of vision. Sister was in town for a singing competition, and her husband and son spent much of the day at the competition with them. We had dinners and nightcaps together, and we all got lots of baby time. On Saturday we went to the WWII museum together, and on Saturday night, friends of ours had an event to attend, and I babysat their 3 month old little girl. It was Aunt RG’s Daycare Extravaganza what with all these babies up in my house, and I loved it.

Jack loved it too.

While they were visiting, a delivery of birthday cupcakes came for me. My brother had told me on my birthday that he went online and bought me some cupcakes to be delivered for my birthday, but by the time he thought of it, the nearest delivery day option was weeks away. And by the time he talked to me, he couldn’t remember the day he picked. So he said to just keep an eye out for a random midday delivery of cupcakes . . . and lo and behold, on Saturday September 21, they arrived!

The next weekend, I drove out to Austin for my annual MILPCon meetup. We are all women who attended law school already with children, and we met through our blogs, but I think I’m the only one in the MILPCon group still blogging (and rarely, at that). We “knew” each other online for years before our first meet up in Denver, where we finally met in person. The next year we met in NOLA, then Boston, then Austin this year. Next year we plan to go to Lexington, Kentucky. I look very much forward to this trip every year, and make it a priority. This group is sympathetic, interesting, interested (in me, in each other), has good ideas, good support, and good life experiences to share. We bonded through the loneliness and stress of going to law school as a parent, and we continue to bond about parenting-while-lawyering. Also, we can do a van-tour of Austin, shop South Congress Street, check out the famous bats, eat Cooper’s BBQ and migas and margaritas, and watch Downton Abbey at the Alamo Drafthouse like nobody’s business.

The following week, we had a one night visit from the Prof’s uncle, who was driving cross country and wanted to see our house. He was a charming and enthusiastic visitor, very into New Orleans neighborhoods, the diner we visited for supper, our house, his room, etc. It was fun to host him for one night.

After dining on po-boys at the Hi-Hat Cafe, we drove him past the house on St. Charles Avenue that is set up every October with Halloween pun skeletons. These folks go to our church (this is also the site of the yearly Easter egg hunt that I generally post about), and so I happen to know that the owner put one up as a joke one year, and the next year put up a couple more, and eventually it has grown into this sprawling thing that tour buses now stop in front of on the reg. It’s really quite impressive – they hire out a company to set them all up.

The day after Uncle Chris left, we packed up the car and drove over to Navarre Beach in Florida, for the annual “what season is it again??” Halloween-adjacent beach trip. It is still in the 90s down here on the Gulf Coast, and although the sun is setting sooner, it is not really cooling down. So we headed over to a Marriott in Navarre Beach – just a short 3ish hour drive away – and spent a lovely couple of days rotating between the pool and the beach and back again.

Some key memories:

  • Craig, wearing a lifejacket, bobbed up and down in the edge of the tide. It dragged him out, pushed him up the shore, snatched him back again, and back and forth for a solid ten minutes while he laughed so hysterically he could barely breathe.
  • Walking into the pool and hearing “Jack! JACK! Jack, come here!” I looked at him and said “you make fast friends everywhere you go.” He shrugged and said “Yup. You just have to talk to people,” and then raced off to wrestle and laugh with a pair of brothers from Alabama.
  • Liam got up every morning (early) and crawled in our bed with us, and tucked into me. Just like when he was a baby. Every morning when he was done snuggling (sometimes an hour or more after he first crawled in), he’d give me a hug and say “thanks mom. I needed that.”

We are headed back now. The Prof is driving as always, and I am updating here. It’s a bit slapdash, but we had a lot of ground to cover and only three ish hours of drive-time to do it (including photo upload time which takes a darn year aaaaaaaaaaa so frustrating). Nearly home, so I will sign off – next up is a trip to visit a very special little lady, Margaret Eloise “Margot”, who was born (10 lbs 6 oz!!! OMG!!!) to my sister (not the one with the 7 month old!). I shall fly on over to San Antonio and visit my FOURTH niece pretty soon – meanwhile, have a great week ahead!