Our 2nd Annual Seattle Work Trip

Or as Nate likes to call it "Our trip from hell". :-)

Let me back up to the beginning. For the second year in a row Nate was scheduled to teach a class in Seattle at the end of April/beginning of May. When we went last year Abby was 2.5 months and so easy to travel with. Nate spent the weekdays teaching while Abby and I visited various family members (both my parents grew up in the Seattle area) or hanging out in the hotel room. It was a great experience for the whole family and we were looking to repeat that experience this time around.

Our first "trip from hell" moment was actually a good thing, but lent itself to the trip from hell. We went up to visit Joe and Karen Larsen and see their new house. (As background - Karen and I have been friends since first grade, Joe and Karen got married in October, Karen moved to Seattle as that's where Joe was living when they were dating and they decided to make Seattle their married location). We had planned to see it back in January but a freak winter storm cancelled our trip. Due to the crazy schedule of both couples this last weekend in April was the last time we'd be able to go to see the new house for a few months. The weekend itself was really fun. We mostly hung out, chatted, and watched TV together (if you haven't watched a show called Duck Dynasty you really need to check it out. It's hilarious!). We did get to take Abby on her first Ferry ride when we took the ferry over to Kingston for lunch. I think she enjoyed herself. Did a lot of bird and car watching as well as playing around on the deck. It was also this Ferry jaunt that broke our jogging stroller. It looks like at some point in time I lost a lug nut off of the front wheel, but since I mostly jog on pavement it wasn't a big deal. When we went down to the water to hang out before getting on the Ferry the sand must have been too much for it. As we were coming back up from the water Nate suddenly stopped pushing as the front wheel had gone all catty-whompy on him. Upon further inspection we noticed that the wheel had popped out of it's holder and the frame was bent. There went jogging with Abby for the week and having a stroller for the week. :-( Fortunately, Abby is still light enough that carrying her on our shoulders is still more fun than work. The other 'hell' moment from this weekend was that Abby did not like sleeping in the pack-n-play. The first night there took three times getting her to fall and then stay asleep and both nights we were up at least once in the middle of the night with a super early wake-up as well. I should probably add in that this was the second (out of a total of three) weekends in a row that we were out of town. In addition, Abby woke up with a high fever Friday morning (Saturday morning the fever was gone so we decided that we'd make the trip as we'd already cancelled once and if her fever came back I would just head home early with her - it never did come back. What came was worse. Yeah!)

My family on the water before getting on the Ferry. My jogger is still functioning at this point.

My cutie-patootie holding a seashell that Nate found for her.

Nate holding Abby while watching the cars load with Karen and Joe. My jogger is now broken. :-(

I don't care that their was a metal railing around the edge of the ferry. I don't care that the gap at the bottom of the metal gate was contained by the edge of the ferry riding up. I do care that Nate is holding on to her. Even that little bit of hood made me feel like he would be able to catch her should that .1% accident occur.

Abby's first ferry ride. It's been years since Nate or I have been on one so it was a special treat for us as well.

Abby entertained herself like this for a good while. She could see her reflection in the window and thought there was another baby to play with. She played peek-a-boo and kept trying to kiss the baby. :-)

Still crawling. Will take a tentative few steps (max four or five) before falling back on to her bottom or forward on to her hands.

Moving on to our second "trip from hell" moment. Nate, Abby, and I left Joe and Karen's house to head to our hotel in Bellevue. We'd previously stayed at this hotel so I knew we'd have a decent but unmemorable room setup. We dropped Nate off for his meeting and I tried to get Abby down for her first nap. It was pretty comical. She was late for her nap so she was super cranky and wound-up and she was in that darn pack-n-play again. I was hiding on the other side of the bed so that she couldn't see me trying to read a book by phone-light. This was the same scenario for her afternoon nap as well. A bright spot in the day was that I got to have dinner and visit with two of my sorority sisters (Stephanie Freedman and Krista Haskins) and their husbands and kids. It was great catching up with them and seeing all the changes that a year brings. I really wish I was able to see them more often, but living on opposite sides of the state doesn't allow for many visits. So I try to soak up as much of them as I can when I do get to see them. So a two-missed nap, cranky child should pass out for the night, right? Nope! Abby decided that even at bed time she was going to resist sleeping. That first night she went late at 9:30pm then was up at 11pm and at 12:00am. At the midnight wake-up she flat refused to go back to sleep. After much tossing and turning I finally turned to Nate and told him to go and get a second hotel room for the night. Poor guy. Not only did he have to teach class the next day but he'd gotten Abby's fever from a few days before and was running a 103* temperature. Then a funny happened. I always put out the Do Not Disturb sign before going to bed, but when Nate came back to the room after getting the second room (with the intent to get his stuff for the next day so that he wouldn't have to bother us) he saw this sign and thought it meant that I'd gotten Abby to finally fall asleep and to not come in. Meanwhile, I was trying to keep Abby up until he got back because I didn't want her to fall asleep and then wake up upon his return. Finally at 2:00am I called the front desk asking where my husband was! I did laugh when I learned he'd left them an hour ago and then worked on getting Abby to sleep although it wasn't for long as she woke up at 5:45am and then at 7:00am when Nate showed up.

At this point Nate and I agreed that it would be best if I called my grandmother to see if Abby and I could stay with her for the week as it was very apparent that the three of us could not handle another night together. After Bestamor (Norwegian for Grandmother) graciously opened her home to us I worked on getting the cartload of gear to the car (it amazed me how much stuff one little person needs). Almost like perfect timing as soon as I got to Bestamor's house and put Abby down for a nap (which thankfully she finally stayed down for) I got a call from Nate saying that he needed medicines as he was back in the hotel room taking a nap and trying to overcome the cold he'd apparently gotten (nope, we soon find out it's not a cold!). So I drive the 25 minute trip back to Nate to drop off meds and check up on him then 25 minutes back to Abby. When Abby got up I noticed these weird blister like marks on her hands. We recently found out she is allergic to tomatoes and since I'm still new to this food allergy thing I completely spaced on this when the pizza requests for Monday's dinner were coming in. Since Abby had a slice with the tomato sauce I figured these blisters were a skin reaction to the tomatoes that were on her fingers and thought nothing else of it.

Nate's blisters from having Hand, Foot, and Mouth disease. Notice that each fingertip has numerous blisters on it. At one point Nate counted 11 blisters on a fingertip before they started to blend together and he couldn't tell one from another.

It's hard to see because Abby wouldn't hold her hand still, but on her pointer finger (the part that's facing upward) she has two blisters. On this hand there were a total of three. That's it! Nate definitely got the worst of this sickness proving that you really do want to get childhood illnesses as a child as they aren't as intense as when you get them for the first time as an adult.

Wednesday passed with no issues. (Well, except for the fact that it rained and rained and rained so Abby was stuck inside to play. Had my jogger not been broken I probably would have put the rain hood up and taken her out but that wasn't to be.)

Thursday had me drive back out to Nate to drop off some Melatonin as he was having troubles sleeping and then back again when he, his co-worker Larry, and I went out to dinner. Bestamor graciously watched Abby for me and my adult-time out was AWESOME!!! I forget how much work she is to take out for dinner until I'm out without her and realize that I don't have to evacuate half the table and spend the majority of the evening trying to pay attention to Nate with one eye and ear and Abby with the other. Even though Nate and Larry talked shop most of the evening and I just sat and listened it was still a great dinner out. 

Then Friday hit with our third "trip from hell" moment. I woke up super early (Abby had decided that a 6am wake-up time was appropriate this entire trip and Bestamor loved having company so she kept me up late most nights. Add in at least one middle of the night waking and it didn't make for a lot of sleep) to an email from Nate saying that he needed to go to Urgent Care at lunch as he had these weird blister spots and his hands and feet that were super painful. Uh oh. A light bulb totally went off and I went back to Abby's weird blisters on her hands. Yep, there were a few more than what I'd noticed on Monday. Her feet, which we'd thought were blisters from her too-tight shoes, had more spots too. At that moment I just knew that these two had Hand, Foot, and Mouth disease. A trip to Urgent Care confirmed this. It was also an Ah Ha moment for Nate who had thought that his feet were hurting all week due to his shoes being too old. And so began the process of Facebook messaging, texting, and calling all the people we'd come in contact with or would come in contact with to let them know about the diagnosis. The sad part of this was that my Mom's side of the family had planned a small family get together, but since our group would have included a compromised immune system, a scoped shoulder, a biopsied face, and a 92-year-old grandmother it was decided that Abby, Nate, and I would not be joining in on the festivities and would miss out this trip. So bummed! :-(

Saturday also had a highlight in that Nate had gotten me tickets to see Madame Butterfly for my birthday. Unfortunately we weren't able to leave in time to have a nice dinner before hand but we did scarf up some onion rings and tater tots at McMennamin's across the street in the few minutes we had before the opera started. The opera was pretty good! Although I did wonder about my lack of empathy as I looked around at all the women crying while I was dry-eyed. Oh, well. Guess opera isn't completely my thing. :-)

By the time Sunday arrived Nate and I were more than ready to go home. Three weekends in a row out of town, too late nights, too early mornings, intense class teaching while feverish and nauseous, trying to entertain a busy little girl in three different locations, two confirmed cases of Hand, Foot, and Mouth disease, sleepless nights, driving half-hour trips multiple times each day, and missing a family reunion. Not a trip we'd like to repeat again. On the positive side, though, I got to spend a ton of time with my Grandmother, Abby really got to know Bestamor, we both got to visit Aunts, Uncles, and Cousins that we hadn't seen in a while (on my dad's side), I got to see friends that I hadn't seen in a while, and Abby got her first Ferry ride. 

Aunt Tammy gave Abby (and Nate and Haylee) a few gifts. Here Abby is taking the gifts out of the bag and then putting them back in. Over and over again. :-)

Here's hoping that these next few weeks are much healthier and more relaxing than this past week has been.