Boy, do I have some catching up to do. Several weeks ago now, we wrapped up another fun--and unexpectedly long--trip to Anderson to visit Grandma and Grandpa B. The start of our trip was delayed by a few hours on Thursday the 2nd due to a sick kid who needed to take a trip to the doctor's office. Nathan started running a fever on Wednesday night, waking up sounding miserable. After his
hospitalization last year, we're on high alert for fevers, so we made an appointment in the morning to take him to the doctor, putting off our planned 5 AM departure. Fortunately, aside from some teething pain and a possible viral infection, the doctor gave him the all clear, saying that she prefers to be sick on vacation than sick at home, so we took off at around 3 PM. Traffic on the beltway and I-66 was a nightmare, but before long, we were out in the country headed south.
Though we had originally planned to push on through to North Carolina that night to find a hotel near Greensboro, the plan changed when we remembered that the stretch of I-81 in southern Virginia and northern North Carolina is an empty wasteland. We ended up stopping at a nice new Holiday Inn Express in Salem, Virginia, getting a room in the far reaches of the hotel for fear of waking the neighbors with a screaming, congested baby. In his first stay in a hotel, Nathan immediately switched to a vacation bedtime schedule, staying up until about 10 PM exploring the hotel room. He recently learned how to slide off the bed onto his feet, so it's now impossible to keep him in bed if he's wired. Of course, his eagerness to explore was fine with me, since the shiny new hotel room was equipped with a sizeable flat panel TV and the NFL Network. I apparently had drawn the short straw, so in our room with two queen beds, I shared a bed with Nathan and Cat had a bed to herself. She also had the luxury of not having tiny baby feet jammed in her ribs during the night.
The next morning, we stayed for the free breakfast at the hotel and then headed out for the rest of the drive to Anderson. Upon arriving, we managed to sneak in quietly while both grandparents busied themselves upstairs. Nathan immediately found the stairs and started climbing up them when Grandma came out to meet him. This trip up the stairs would be the first of many; Nathan spent much of his time during the trip climbing up one set of stairs and down the other. It took a while for Grandma and Grandpa to get over their jitters, but they eventually began resisting the urge to help him along after every misstep, letting him climb the stairs his own way. However, had we not borrowed a pair of baby gates from Betty, their next door neighbor, it likely would have been an exhausting vacation.
Much of Nathan's time during our trip was devoted to chasing Snowflake and Scooter, the two cats, around the house. Snowflake grew somewhat receptive to his approaches, but once again, Scooter would have nothing to do with him. With some guidance, Nathan gradually turned from pulling on Snowflake's tail to petting and hugging her whenever he had the chance. Aside from Nathan's enjoyment of the cats and the wide open spaces in Grandma and Grandpa's house, our trip was filled with the usual entertainment: lunches at the Pendleton Sandwich Shop and the Islander, Grandpa's smoked ribs, a few meals at Zaxby's, several trips to the pool, and an excursion to pick up peaches. On most mornings during the trip, we took Nathan down to the pool shortly after breakfast. Unlike his trip last July, Nathan was unsatisfied with being held in the water by one of us or floating in an inflatable toy. Once he found the kiddie pool, he was hooked. He loved being able to stand up in the water, splash around, and play with his blue ball and the toys that other kids had left behind. The comfortably warm water also meant that the rest of us had no objection to hanging out in the kiddie pool with him.
For our peach outing, we took a trip to
Callaham's orchard. Cat and I had previously had great experiences with Callaham's blackberry jam, so we were looking forward to trying his peaches. We were supplied with an ample amount of peaches just ripe enough to survive the trip back to Maryland, and were very pleased with the purchase when we finally tried them. In addition to the great peaches, Callaham's also has quite a few diversions on the orchard grounds. Just behind the store was a large pen filled with goats. Nathan was, of course, mesmerized by the animals, particularly by the curious little goat that was just his size, that is, until it was pushed out of the way by the giant goat that was almost as tall as me. I bought a handful of feed from the vending machine next to the pen and let Nathan get up close and personal with the goats. He got a little goat drool on his hand, but how bad could that be? Continuing on into the orchard, we came across the giant enclosure occupied by deer, including a small fawn that still had its spots. Half of the pen was occupied by several wild turkeys, including a rather flamboyant male who loved showing off his tail feathers. A roast turkey sandwich was starting to sound quite tasty. Before we headed back to the car, we stopped by the pond to feed the giant catfish that the owner had told us about. Nathan watched intently as we spread a bagful of feed around to the menagerie of animals by the pond, including geese, ducks, and a pony that wandered over. The catfish, however, took over, flopping around on top of each other and snatching up every piece of food they could reach before the ducks got to it.
The highlight of our Fourth of July was a delicious lunch of Grandpa's smoked ribs and an impressive spread of side dishes. We ate our lunch on the back porch, watching the holiday golfers and enjoying a few cold beers with the meal. Nathan tried the ribs, but they weren't his favorite; as it turns out, he's not a big fan of beef right now. He tried some chicken, but filled up mostly on vegetables, his current favorite food (not that we're complaining). He even indulged in a few bites of Aunt Karen's chocolate pie after dinner. Unlike last year, there were no fireworks to be seen that evening. We came across a few fireworks remnants on the ground the next day, but the only fireworks that any of us saw that night were on television during the Capitol Fourth show on PBS. Later that evening, the sound of Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture was reverberating through the house.
Unfortunately, the low point of the trip was a late night trip that I made to a 24-hour Walgreens in downtown Anderson. Nathan had been suffering from intermittently severe congestion throughout the trip, having to fall asleep sitting up so that he could continue breathing clearly. He woke up during the night on a few occasions, uncomfortable due to his clogged sinuses and difficulty breathing. The fact that he likes to sleep with a pacifier complicated things, since he frequently could only breath well through his mouth. On one night late in the trip, the congestion became so bad that he couldn't fall asleep, so I headed out to the drugstore after dark to stock up on every possible remedy. Managing not to get lost while driving along Anderson's back roads by myself, I returned with a grab bag of solutions, the most effective of which turned out to be the children's Zyrtec. The medicine cleared him up somewhat, but the side effect of drowsiness undoubtedly helped.
By Wednesday, it was time to head home. We had originally planned to leave on Tuesday, but, being in no mood to end our vacation then, we opted to stay an additional day and continue taking it easy. Looking less like gypsies that during our previous year's trip, we packed up the van on Wednesday, including our two boxes of peaches, and headed north. In no mood to reach I-95 in northern Virginia during rush hour, we procrastinated for a while by detouring through Greenville to Furman. It had been ages since I had driven down Pleasantburg to Poinsett Highway, but after the countless trips down that stretch of road while attending Furman, I drove the route mostly by muscle memory. By the time we reached Furman, it was largely vacant, even missing the usual weekend tourists. We parked near the student center and stopped by the bookstore to pick up a few T-shirts. Afterwards, we gave Nathan one last chance to stretch his legs before the long drive began, so he led us around the lake to the rose garden. Even though we prevented him from crawling into the fountain like he wanted, Nathan loved stomping around on the brick pathways in the rose garden. Before long, though, we climbed back in the car in order to reach our preferred stops in North Carolina by lunchtime. Upon reaching those stops, we discovered, somewhat to Cat's dismay but not at all to mine, that a Schlotsky's restaurant that we had marked on our map of North Carolina had since been converted to a Zaxby's. I was thus given one last opportunity to indulge in those delicious wings and chicken fingers. It was one last taste of the South before we returned home.
Before we left for our trip to Anderson last month, we decided that Nathan was overdue for a haircut. He had gradually developed a baby mullet of sorts, with scruffy curls running down to his neck and with summer heating up, those curls were starting to get a little sweaty. So on the Saturday before we left, we took him down to Cartoon Cuts in Rockville to have his hair cut for the first time. I had originally offered to review the instructional DVD that came with my Wahl hair clippers, but common sense prevailed and we decided to leave it to the professionals.
Once Nathan was seated in the salon, it was clear that the woman cutting his hair was no stranger to first haircuts. She was quite adept at dealing with Nathan's crying, turning, and squirming and managed to cut his hair without poking him in the eye with her scissors. Several times, Nathan tried to turn around to see what the strange woman behind him was doing. The Elmo video playing on the television in front of his chair caught his attention for a few brief moments, but not long enough to distract him from the fact that something odd was going on. After a while, he relaxed a little and let her do her work. By the time she was done, all but one of his curls were gone and he looked much more clean cut. Nathan received a certificate commemorating his first haircut, Cat got a small bag of his hair clippings, and I got the bill. The first haircut passed without incident and with few to no tears shed by Cat.
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