First Family Vacation

This was written several days ago, but for reasons I'm not going into, I'm not home and able to add pictures to this entry, so I've decided to go ahead and publish the entry w/out pics and add the pics later:

So we all survived our first family vacation. There were a lot of firsts for G.

G got her first tooth, saw her first snow, ate her first protein (hard boiled egg yolk), and had her first bout of constipation.

Apparently, constipation is a common side effect of teething, traveling, and high altitudes, so we had all three covered. We did not realize she was constipated until almost the end of the trip, so S immediately began G on some dates (reconstituted dried dates), which was the only thing we had. G had been on a steady diet of pears all week which had only a minimal effect. The dates seem to be helping a lot (along with being back home), as G had several little poops Sunday, and several more today. Since it is our second day of dates, we can begin another food item, which will be prunes. The other advantage of dates and prunes are that they are easy to make, just add water and wait for them to soften and smush.

As far as first snow, G didn't seem impressed. We sat her down on the snow several times, and never really got a smile out of her. It was probably hard for her to smile since she couldn't move any of her arms or legs, being so bundled up in her snow suit, but at least she was warm. Then we opened up her suit so her hands could stick out and let her touch the snow. At first she was curious, then she decided it was just too cold.

The egg yolk gave us some great pics of G doing funny things with her mouth. I don't know if it was the texture of the egg or it just happened to coincide with her learning new mouth exercises.

The trip back was a little more effort. The plane was not full, but definitely not as empty as going. We all shared one row. G was also more fussy, probably from the constipation. She slept in the airport after we went through security and waited by our gate. She woke up just in time to board and nurse during take off (I timed it better this time around). G was up most of the flight, playing with snack bags, eating some ice and pear, and ripping up magazine pages. She never was full on crying, but was definitely cranky and loud. Oh, and we even managed to change her diaper while she was standing up. She finally fell asleep about 20 minutes before we landed, and we decided it was better to just let her sleep, though I had some grapes ready just in case she woke up.

Overall, it was a nice relaxing trip. We would have liked to snowboard a second day, but it was still great to be able to get our one day in (daycare was too expensive, so we ended up just taking turns watching her and going up on the slopes, which worked out really well anyways because the high altitude was hard on the lungs). On the other days, we slept in, walked around the town, and took a drive around the area. At one point, E asked me if it was really a vacation for me, since I was still taking care of G feeding her and making her food, and cooking for us. It made me think of what the definition of "vacation" really is. I don't (yet) feel like I need a vacation away from everything - for me, it was nice enough to just be away, in a new place where I don't have to look at the clutter or "things to do" around the house, even if I'm still cooking, taking care of G (making her food wasn't that difficult, but I am thankful that we opted to do the disposables instead of the cloth diapers), folding laundry, etc.