No Need to Stress

We took a quick trip with Josh's brother Jared, and his wife Amy this weekend to Texas. As many of you know, I am a pretty high-stress person, and that only intensifies when it comes to Meili. So as the trip got closer and closer I found more and more reasons to stress.

1) The flight: I was so worried about how Meili would handle the air pressure change, being held for like 5 hours straight, and the fact that it was interrupting her nap schedule. Plus, I've heard horror stories about children on flights and I didn't want everyone to hate us. The result: We took lots of snacks, treats, and toys, and it wasn't a problem at all. Plus, she ended up sleeping about the half the time. (And I think she loved taking naps in her daddy's arms, so she was fine.)

2) Sleeping at night: Meili has always been so good about sleeping through the night, but I didn't know how she would do sleeping in a strange place, and with other people getting up at night or moving around, etc. etc. Plus, I didn't want her to keep everyone else up if she did end up crying herself to sleep, or coughing at night. The result: She was awesome. As soon as the lights were out, she found a comfortable spot, and zonked out. She never really woke up crying, and she didn't cough at all at night-the first time in weeks! She slept on an air mattress with either Josh or I and I think that was actually pretty fun for her, because she never sleeps with us.

3) Naps: I have worked 10 long months to get her naps to where they are now, and she is a different child when she hasn't had her naps. The result: We ended up driving and flying at pretty much the perfect times, so she stayed on almost her same napping routine.

4) Driving: We had to drive for about 4 hours and we've never gone that long with her. In case you don't know, Meili is pretty active and likes to just crawl around and get in to things. The result: We broke the drive up, and she still did awesome. She slept for about 2 hours, and we kept her entertained for about an hour.

5) The ball games: We went to 3 ball games in 3 days, which means lots of loud noise, being held yet again, and messing up her nap routine again. The result: Meili was totally fine. She even took a little bit of a nap in each game (even in a stadium with 100,000 people) There are only a few people that I know that could do that! And she learned how to clap! Yea!

Moral of the story: Meili is awesome and I never should have doubted!! (And Josh was SO helpful-which I also shouldn't have doubted!)

Here's Meili on her first flight. We flew out on Saturday morning.

We quickly stopped in Dallas at the JFK memorial.

Pretty much where my head is, is the mark on the street where JFK was shot.

I don't know why or how this tradition started, but people were taking turns taking their picture on the X-which is where JFK was fatally wounded.

The grassy knoll, where they suspect another shooter was hiding. This was just a short detour on our trip, but I thought it was very interesting, and there were a lot of well-deserved memorials for such a loved president.

We went to a Texas Rangers baseball game on Saturday afternoon. The sad part is that when we originally planned the trip, the game was scheduled for 7:00. Well, they changed the time, and we had no idea. So when we stopped to get lunch, the game-that we were supposed to go to was currently being played. So we were only able to go to a couple innings. I think Meili was fine with that. :)

It was still a beautiful stadium though- and it's a good thing that the Rangers won. We didn't have such good luck the rest of the trip :(

The Dallas Cowboys stadium is across the street. So we got this shot when it wasn't busy.

Our family, outside home plate.

The next day, we went to a Houston Astros game. Jared lived in Houston for a year, and that's his team. Sadly, they are the worst team in the league right now. But that meant we were able to get really good seats, pretty cheap, and the game wasn't crowded at all.

The final score of the game... 19-3. Ah, nuts!

I thought this was a cute picture. (If you notice the bruise on her face...First daycare battle wound. Ugh! I was mad!)

See...proof of how much Meili loved the game!

Then on Monday, we went to the Dallas Cowboys game. (Or, more importantly, the Washington Redskins game-because we all refused to cheer for the Cowboys!)

How could something so cute have caused me such stress?

Daddy and baby getting all pumped up before the game.

The stadium was huge, it was so crazy!

Then we had to test out the sports mode, and zoom on the camera. Because, trust me, we were in the nose bleeds!

Again, sadly, the Redskins lost with a last minute fumble. But we all still had fun!

We found the secret weapon for flying... Ring pops!

All in all, I'd call it a success.