The trip

Yay, Molly's asleep early (fingers crossed) so I have time to post some pictures from our weekend.

Molly and her grandpa:



Eating jelly at the diner Saturday morning:


The girls at the Saturday night cook-out.



Molly at Mendon Ponds park, where the three of us had lunch Sunday.




Memorial Day parade Monday morning:

The cousins:


We did a lot of other fun stuff, too. On Saturday Jim and I left Molly with Oma and Grandpa, then went out to lunch by ourselves. We had SUCH a good time. We've been meaning to do that for a long time but always ran out of time or energy. This time we made sure it was one of the first things we did when we got into town.

We also went to two big family parties on Sunday and got to spend time with Luutsen and Annie, who are visiting from Holland.

OK, I spoke way too soon about Molly going to bed early tonight. I've been back in her room, oh, about four times since I started this. Her nose started running on Sunday and by Monday afternoon she was having a full-on wiping-her-nose-on-people's-shirts cold.

She's all stuffed up and it made for an unusually harrowing drive home. We had just gotten on the Thruway when she made a horrible gagging noise and then threw up all over herself. We got off at the next exit, cleaned her up and changed her clothes. She seemed to recover immediately so we got right back on the road. She wanted "chssss" (cheese) and bread and melon and pretty much anything I could hand back to her to eat, so I figured her stomach was fine. About an hour later we found out that everything was not fine. She threw up again all over herself. We got off the highway and cleaned her up again. Jim rode in the back with her for a little while after that, but she seemed perky enough. This time we told her the "chsss" was gone and limited her to white rolls and water. Eventually she fell asleep and the rest of the ride was uneventful.

I don't think she has a stomach bug. Sometimes when her nose stuffed up eating seems to trigger her gag reflex. The cold is making it hard for her to catch up on sleep, though. She stayed up much later than usual all weekend and appears to be physically incapable of sleeping past 5 a.m. under any circumstances.

Fortunately Jim had the day off work yesterday so we had a little time to rest. We couldn't go anywhere in the car most of the day, though, because Molly's car seat had to be cleaned. I was very disappointed to find out that the seat cover must be hand washed in cold water and air dried and, even worse, the straps and buckles don't even detach from the plastic frame. Clearly the people who designed it that way never had to scrub puke out of a patch of velcro with cold water and a scrub brush while balancing a car seat on the kitchen counter. Definitely an oversight on their part.