We spent the New Years holiday up in Quincy, Washington, attending the wedding of my old college friend Heather and her fiance, Jared. Neither of us had met Jared before, but upon meeting him it was clear that he was just like all of the men the rest of us "Mills girls" ended up with -- smart, bespectacled and kind.
And how did Sadie do on the trip? Great, actually. We were incredibly nervous about flying with her, despite assurances that three months is a great age for traveling. My hope was that she'd sleep on the plane the whole way there. Well...she didn't. But she only had two meltdowns, one in the Gladstones at LAX when she decided she was hungry and didn't want a bottle, and another once she got on the plane. You could almost hear the collective groan from people around us. Fortunately, a little bouncing and she quieted right down.
The trip itself was a wild adventure, from spending one whirlwind night in Seattle, to battling the rental car people for an hour the next morning in an attempt to switch out our rented minivan for an all-wheel-drive SUV, to braving snowy conditions on the Snoqualmie Pass as we crossed over into central Washington.
The place we stayed is located on the Columbia River, an alien landscape of sharply-cut gorges and flat prairie-land punctuated with steep hillsides. Everything had a light dusting of snow when we arrived, and another storm moved in that night and dumped several inches on the resort. It was magical and beautiful, every minute. And words can never express how much I love getting together with the old college crowd to share memories and gape over how much everyone has grown up.
Of course, everything was made tolerable solely because of the presence of Scott's sister, who babysat Sadie while we attended the rehearsal dinner and the wedding.
So, my advice for traveling with a young infant? Pack lots of diapers, prepare for some meltdowns when the schedule is inevitably disrupted, and expect the unexpected. In our case, the unexpected was Sadie conking out at Sea-Tac and sleeping all the way home, through the landing, even as I carried her through LAX, right until my dad picked us up and I handed her over to him so I could install her carseat. The next day, she slept like the dead.
Congratulations, Heather and Jared.
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