Vacation

We had a great time on our surprise vacation last week. Jamie and I had been kicking around the idea of going somewhere, but we were worried about being stressed out if we went somewhere far away with a baby in tow. Thankfully my old boss offered us the use of his house on Marco Island, FL. It was great! It is a lot easier to take care of Mia with a stock of toys and some room for her to move around. And since there was a van there we could also use, all we had to do was pay for airfare. I figured there was no way we could drive 19 hours with a young child. She did very well on her first flight. She was wiggly, but managed to stay in a good mood the whole 2.5 hours.

The house had a pool, so we spent every evening before dinner swimming. She was so worn out that she slept all night, every night we were there, which is unusal. The house had a boat and jet skis for our use, so we went out on the gulf one sunny afternoon. Poor Jamie was kind of stressed out driving the boat, but Mia fell asleep and I had the chance to kick back on the prow and relax.

We brought her to the Residents' Beach one day and she saw the ocean for the first time. She didn't seem to care too much. Jamie said she probably thought of it as a giant sound machine (she sleeps with her sound machine on ocean sounds every night). She tried to eat some sand which freaked me out (I think sand is gross), but she did like all of the seagulls that were flying around us. We also went to the Naples Zoo and Mia made friends with a leopard. Well, actually, I'm pretty sure the leopard was trying to figure out to eat her, but whatever.

The flights home were good. We connected in ATL and on both legs we had a middle seat free to put her in. That made it a lot easier. Overall, it was a great time. The only way it could have had a better time was if I didn't have so much stupid homework to do all week, but even that was OK in the warm Florida sun!