Never. Traveling. Again.

Seriously, we are not leaving this state until LVC Homecoming, and that's not till October, and we only have to make it to mile 266 of the turnpike. We're confident (hoping) that this can be done with no stops, if timed properly (leave after breakfast bottle, right before naptime, bring lots of toys, pray to God.)

It was a nice weekend, in retrospect, just too much pavement rolling by for my taste.

Saturday we drove across the Walty to PHL to pick up Dad. We're tricky. We've learned that the quickest way to pick somebody up from the airport, at least Philly's airport, is to have them go to their departure gate, and through the use of cell phones and timing, drive by the quick drop-off zone, and have them hop in. In and out in 5 minutes flat, always. Except traffic was insane getting back into NJ, what with it being a gorgeous, 78 degree day. Saturdays=Shore Traffic, it's a law of nature. You want to hang a funeral-type flag on your car that says, "Just trying to get home, damn it!" so you can zoom past all those shore-goers. You also hate those shoregoers, because they're getting a day at the shore and, well, you're not.

Cait (sister) brought Matt (sister's boyfriend) to meet us and Dad, which I have to say was pretty cool. She's pretty darn serious about the guy, and after meeting him I can say that I'm pleased to see that. First of all, I liked him the minute I saw him. Freud would love this relationship: he looks like a young version of Dad. And a smidge of Bob, too. But he was friendly, polite, and offered to pay for lunch (and was denied the right, but the attempt solidified his place of "good guy" with Bob). My only concern is that he's from MA and from a large, close family there, and that's a heck of a drive. Since we know that Cait would be moving there. Duh. On the other hand, I've always liked that area of the country. It has vacay potential.

We bummed around and hung out with Dad and Cait after Matt left for home, and yesterday (Sunday) the REAL fun began:

In one day, we traveled aprox. 300 miles, round trip, with an (almost) 9-month-old baby, to my grandparents' house in PA. Long-ass trip, and that's doing it one-way. The traffic was bad getting there, the Vine St. Xpress-way was a parking lot-type mess. We stopped at a rest stop to feed and change the girl and found that they had no working changing table in their "Changing/Family restroom" and their high chair didn't have any working straps to actually secure a child into it. Joy. After a looooooo-o0oooooo-oooooong trip, we made it to Grandmother's House. First of all, I call her Mamu. Yes, that's what I said, but I call her it under duress, and have done so as long as I remember. I probably did it once, when I was 1, and she liked it, and it stuck. Or rather, she stuck it to me. When I attempted to switch it to Grandma at an older, more embarassable age, Mamu refused to give up "Mamu". Because we share a birthday, we share a "special bond". (She's mastered the passive-agressive tactics beautifully, and since I h have my own guilt gas tank, she usually gets what she wants. So again, we have a "special bond".) Oh, and I apparently 'gave my heart to Jesus' at her house. I have no memory of this. I think I was 2. But apparently Jesus has my heart, and it happened at her house, so she's now going straight to heaven, so I hear.
I've given up, can you tell? Anyway...

We begged her, BEGGED HER not to cook. Unlike most warm and fuzzy grandma's, my grandmother's cooking has always ripped large holes right through people's large intestines. This time Dad is on a strict diet and said before arriving in this time zone that he was going to cook everything, bring all ingredients, so that all my grandparents would have to do was relax and play with the baby. So of course my grandmother made a big deal of all the trouble she went to cooking and baking anyway, even though we told her that Dad didn't want her to do any cooking. So she made sure we knew that she spent all day making dinner. And what she made was "the chowder". This is actually a semi-stew like thing that sits in a crock pot for a day, consisting of chicken fat (and possibly something that used to be overcooked chicken), carrot mush, potato mush, and celery mush. No seasoning except for whatever salt was left in the giant gallon drum of salt she buys from Weis Market. Add that to yellow water, and you've got "the chowder". MMMMMmmmm! Colon-ripping good!
So naturally, we ate Dad's meal, delish and healthy, and except for the cookies that she made without consulting Dad and of course which Dad couldn't eat because of the diet (causing much moaning on the grandmother's part) we didn't touch a nip of Mamu's food. (Again, much moaning, but we TOLD her not to cook!) But hey, my tummy is happy and nobody had an emergency restroom stop on the way home.

Except for her passive-aggressive comments about having cooked for nobody, the visit went well. Mamu immediately scooped Maddie out of my arms literally before I got in the door, and was severely admonished by my faithful child's wails. We have stranger anxiety over here, in a big way. However, my darling girl seems to have a 6th sense for who Mommy really wants her to really punish for their invasion of her personal space. "Grab me without even so much as a glance to Mommy to ask if it's ok if you grab her child, will you? Screw YOU!" If a friend of Mommy's who is calm and sweet to her asks to hold her, she's cool with it. Thankfully, Maddie taught Mamu that if you warm up a little first, you get rewarded with many baby laughs and baby kisses and baby hugs. She went to everybody else like a champ, and eventually let Mamu hold her too. On her knee. Facing out only. Atta girl.

We took pictures, we visited, we assured Mamu a dozen or so times that Maddie was tired but wouldn't nap there (trying to keep us there longer, she insisted that Maddie should take a nap BEFORE going for a long car ride after bedtime...moms out there, does this sound reasonable to you?), and then we were on our way.

The trip home only took 28 hours - or 3, if you looked at a clock. I'm sticking with 28. Route 30, 83, turnpike, Schuylkill expressway, BF bridge, and finally to NJ and our homeland. We stopped once to change the girl. I sat in the back through half of it, to keep Maddie company. I can understand how a baby gets bored in the backseat in the dark. Toys aren't near as fun in the dark. So she attempted to remove my bracelet for about 2 hours, and she was sweet and happy. I also sat in the back because I get antsy driving in the dark and rain, and I'm always telling Bob to "watch out". Car accident in college. I'm a chicken ever since. We were only almost hit twice. Nobody looks when they change lanes, it's just not hip anymore. When we got home, we ached, were dead tired, and left the house even messier than it was when we left.

I came back mortified because we'd asked my in-laws to look in on the doggie during our expedition, and found that we left the house a HUGE mess for them to look in on. We'd had to do baby things, then pack, and get out of the house ASAP that morning. Of course mother in-law picked up a few things, because you couldn't see the living room floor for all the baby toys. But that was the mess we returned to, and promptly ignored, and went to bed. Slept so hard I didn't move till 5 Am. And that hurt too. 3 Advil, 2 cups of coffee, and a shower later, I'm a new woman.

So that was our expedition to and from PA in one day, with the baby. I have to confess that I gazed longly at the place in the van where hanging DVD player would have been, knowing that in a few months Maddie can sit facing forward. That might have come in REEEEEEEEAAAAAALLLLLy handy. But that doesn't matter. Because we are Never. Traveling. Again.