And we’re off!

So begins our summer road trip. After packing all of our camping gear into the car, I strapped Addison into her car seat. She seemed quite content surrounded by piles of gear 🙂

We are now in Dublin, Virginia, spending the night in a Comfort Motel. We tried to do the trip to South Carolina (to Kendra’s parents’ home) in one day, but now that Addison is moving and shaking, we need to stop more often to let her stretch her legs, so our travel time has increased exponentially. It’s not easy finding somewhere clean enough that she can crawl around – at least, not until Kendra had the brilliant idea of going to Barnes and Noble! What a perfect place – there are toys and books in the kids’ section and a Starbucks for me.

The most amusing moment was when we were walking through the bookstore, looking for the travel section, and Kendra exclaimed, “Look how many nursing books they have!” I had to gently explain they were books about the profession, not the act of breastfeeding. I guess your perspective really does shift after you have a baby. I couldn’t help but have a good laugh at Kendra’s expense – luckily, she had a good laugh too.

We ended up picking up two books for Addison, one that is soft cloth that she can chew, and, “The Monster at the End of This Book,” which was one of my childhood favorites. We also picked up Nora Ehpron’s audiobook “I Feel Bad About My Neck,” which I DO NOT recommend. Perhaps it’s just her voice, but we shut it off after about 10 minutes of what seemed like pointless whining. We were both disappointed because we’d recently read a great piece by her in the New Yorker, and I am a fan of her films, but this particular book just wasn’t up to par with her usual writing. Thank goodness I had loaded some David Sedaris onto my iPhone – we listened to “Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim” instead.

We also made a stop at Dunkin Donuts to feed Addison her lunch. While she was enjoying her yogurt drink, I wandered over to a picture hanging on the wall. It turned out to be a photograph of the first Dunkins, which apparently was in Qunicy, MA. Who knew?

Out next major pit stop for Addison to move around was at a church lawn in Virginia. She had a great time grabbing handfuls of grass and sharp sticks, then shoving them into her mouth. For now, I need to get some sleep before we drive the last five hours to South Carolina.