The Seversons

What we expected from our drive to Texas: 2 days, clocking in over 15 hours with a baby who hates his carseat and must tell us so constantly despite the fact that he lacks any language skills, requiring neverending stops at every gas station and rest area in the southeast while we try to calm him down.

What we got on our drive to Texas: a perfectly angelic baby, so long as his carseat was draped with a thin blanket.  It was like he was a little parakeet who thinks the blanket over his cage means it’s night time.

He happily played with his toes and toy elephant for hours on end with little naps here and there, you would’ve thought he wasn’t even there if we didn’t take occasional peeks under the blanket to make sure he did actually exist.  When we would check in, he’d give us the same look a surly teenager gives his parents when one of them opens the door to his room without knocking.

We expected our baby to handle things well once we settled down, and he happily bounced away on his exersaucer in the hotel during the night we spent on the road.  However, he was not such a big fan of the hotel crib.  And by that I mean, he did nothing but scream from the moment we put him in it.  So Graham and I shared a bed for the first time in a couple of months, which I don’t think either of us enjoyed much.

Once we arrived he did a better job adapting, probably because he rarely ever left the grip of his Grammy, who is a known baby-hog.  His favorite trick the last few weeks is a fake cough that I originally thought was real.  We found out it was fake when we started mimicking him and he’d immediately stop to listen to you.

Oh, did I mention his other recent trick? Pulling off his socks.

Being with a serial baby-hog at least gives us the opportunity to go out.  We went on lots of walks, jogs, and runs; saw 3 movies together; ate Mighty Fine, Freebird, brisket, breakfast tacos and Tex-Mex;  and slipped out for a romantic night all to ourselves (thanks, cheap hotel-booking websites!), which means we had steak for dinner and room service for breakfast.

Here you can see our lovely view of Town Lake (I refuse to call it anything else) and the reflection of our hotel room in the glass–I’m tucked in the lower left corner.  How we scored a lake view with our insanely low rate I’m still not exactly sure, but we certainly appreciated it.

We left with plenty of time before the holiday, so by the time we got to Christmas we had a rather disgruntled baby on our hands who missed his crib.  This is why all our Christmas pictures have the vacant expression you can see below:

All our Christmas morning pictures go back and forth between that vacant look and a baby who is very, very determined to eat all the wrapping paper he can get his hands on.

But Graham has been very pleased with the presents inside that wrapping paper.  His new seahorse is his regular bedtime companion and keeps said bedtime so calm we have to make sure the monitor is working.

It’s always sad to see the vacation come to an end.  We will be sad to lose our spacious rental car, mostly because it will leave us down to one vehicle.  Eric and I haven’t been the luckiest bunch lately.  Both of us were rear-ended within two months and we found out last week that my car was totaled.  It puts us in a pretty big pinch, had it happened earlier we would buy another car to replace it.  Had it happened a few months later we wouldn’t do anything, since we were planning to go down to one car over the summer.  But now we’ll need two vehicles for a period of three months next year and have yet to find a reasonable option.  Plus, Eric’s car still hasn’t been repaired so we have to get it in and get yet another rental since we’ll be completely car-less at that point.  Plus we have insurance companies to haggle with, which always makes the holidays brighter.

This week we’ll make one final visit to say goodbye to my lovely little car (and get my stuff out of it).  I plan on wearing black.  If you see me wearing black, you’ll know what I’m in mourning for.  Rest in peace, little Scion.

Hopefully our luck is changing.  On our return trip the baby happily went to sleep in the hotel crib.