First, the trip

Sooo much going on and not enough time to blog about it. First, there was spring training...

Anne, Ed and Skiba left for Florida on Thursday. After some question about which car to take with us (since I was supposed to drive the Subaru, R.I.P.), Kim and I drove the rental car, a bland but fabulously gas-efficient Toyota Corolla. Debbie and Lewis caravaned with us down to Orlando at the exciting hour of 6 am, and the drive down there with Margaret was an adventure, as usual. Oddly, she didn't fall back asleep when I put her in the car. For the first hour and a half, she sat quietly in the back, watching the buses (BUS!) and other traffic. We stopped for breakfast in Macon, where Margaret was happy to eat her pancake but called it a "waff."

One thing to note is that a fast food meal stop, which probably takes adults a leisurely 30 minutes (including a bathroom break) takes about an hour with a toddler. We ate, then I had to change Margaret from her pajamas to clothes, and a new diaper, in the car (thank you Arkwright Road McDonalds for having no changing table). This was an acrobatic adventure in itself, and then getting settled back in the car, etc. took what seemed like forever.

A little before lunchtime, Margaret decided she was over this whole being in the car adventure. She used every word she could come up with to tell me she wanted to get out of the car seat: off, up, no Mommy, 'nuff, no mo'. It was funny, but sad. How do you explain to a toddler that each time we stop to get out of the car is time we aren't progressing towards our destination. Poor thing fell asleep about 20 minutes before we stopped for gas and lunch. Sadly, we had to wake her up.

As per tradition, we stopped at the Florida line for free juice, and Margaret played in their small kids area. All went well for the rest of the trip until we were on the last leg of the Florida turnpike. The highway was pretty crowded, and I'd lost sight of Debbie a few cars up. Our exit came up pretty quickly, and we got off the turnpike, but just as we took the exit I saw Debbie's car still ahead on the turnpike. Ooops! Kim called and asked if they had a different route, but they just hadn't seen the sign for the exit. Of course, being the turnpike, there's no way to turn around, so they meandered their way through town and arrived at the resort only 5 minutes after we did.

The Wyndham Palms Resort was almost too fancy for us, although I found the service to be pretty mediocre. When we checked in, they sent us to another office for our keys, etc. that Anne had left us, but the second place had to send someone over to the first office to get the keys that had been there all along. Then the map had the wrong name for the road our suite was on, and the numbers on the buildings were confusing. Each building had a street number and a hotel number, so we were looking for building 11 and kept seeing 2849 or some such thing. Of course, we finally found the number 11 behind a tree and made it to the suite, just before 5. So 11 hours for an 8-hour drive. Great. Of course, 30 minutes of that was spent trying to get keys and find the suite, so I suppose only 10.5 hours.

Our suite was huge, but with tile floors and glass topped tables, so still a bit of a hazard for Margaret. She immediately found the hotel phone and "called" her daddy on it. I ultimately unplugged the phone so she wouldn't dial the front desk or security, and I then became one of those people who lets their kids destroy a hotel room just so they can have some peace. She dragged that phone all over the place, and every one of us had to "talk" to Wes. All she ever said on the phone was "Hi Daddy," and I find it amusing that she wouldn't talk to him when he was actually on the phone, but if she was pretending to talk to him, it was "hi Daddy" over and over.

Friday night we ate dinner at Pizza Uno, but by the time we got there, it was 7:40, close to Margaret's bedtime. Then there was the requisite 45 minute Friday night wait for a table, which was frustrating because empty tables abounded...they were clearly just short staffed. So by the time we got food, it was almost 9 and M. was done. I managed to get some food in my mouth, and spent the later part of the meal walking her around outside. Sadly, the late dinner was a theme for the weekend.

Saturday's game at the Astros' park was only 10 miles away, but construction traffic made it take an hour. We were hoping to get there in time to see some batting practice, but we actually missed the first inning. Despite the game starting at naptime, Margaret did pretty well (she did sleep in the car on the way there). She didn't want to wear a hat, so I missed big chunks of the game as I tried to position myself to put her in the shade.

I was amused at the reaction of security to the "diaper bag." I just threw everything we'd both need at the game (snacks for her, since we weren't really allowed to bring food in, diapers, sunblock, glasses, hats, sweaters, etc.) in a backpack. Lewis very kindly carried the backpack while I had Margaret in the back carrier. When the security people saw us, he asked, "Which one is the diaper bag?" and didn't even look in it. So any terrorists reading this should note...bring a baby and you can carry a bomb anywhere. OK, hopefully there are actually not any terrorists reading this....

Dinner that night at Sizzler was also late, but it was at Sizzler, so Margaret wasn't the only crying baby, and there were goldfish and graham crackers on the salad bar to make her happy. Her diet all weekend was dreadful, but since I had taken her out of her element and routine, I let her eat anything she asked for, and since junk food abounds on vacation, there were many cookies and snack foods.

Sunday's game was back at the Braves home field at the Disney complex, only 2 miles from our hotel. No traffic this time, but in the 10 minute drive there from Bob Evans (where we ate breakfast), M. fell asleep hard. I stayed behind in the car to let her sleep while everyone else went to save our seats on the lawn. Ed was kind enough to stay and keep me company for that 45 minutes. We then packed M. up in the back carrier, hiked to the park, and as soon as I got M. down on the blanket, she started to say "bye bye baseball. No mommy!" It was very sad. I think it was just too hot and sunny and she was over all the crowds. Naturally, Brian Jordan got a home run in the first inning, so the fireworks went off and scared her to death. I was simultaneously happy and sad.

I spent most of that game walking around to keep her cool. Around the 6th inning, Kim found me and suggested we leave, since she didn't mind leaving, and I clearly wasn't able to watch much of the game. Sadly, because there are obviously more than one Florida turnpike and not good signage to get us back to I-75, we ended up driving around Orlando for an extra 45 minutes before we made it out, pretty much negating our lead on the others. When we left, the Mets had just destroyed the Braves 4-run lead and the score was Mets 6, Braves 5. Luckily, after we left, the Braves recovered and won (8-6 maybe?).

After another hour-long stop for dinner and Starbucks in Gainesville, Anne, Skiba, Ed and Matt (who had joined us on Saturday) ended up passing us. Matt's car wouldn't start, so when he had to stop for gas, he had to get them to help him push start it, and yet they still made it home 30 minutes before we did.

In general it was a good trip, but definitely exhausting. Margaret was tired of the crowds and noise by Sunday, and sadly there was not much time for playing at the park near the suite or going to the pool. The one time we had an hour to kill, I asked her if she wanted to go to the park and she said no, so that was that. I'll definitely take her again, but I'm assuming she'll be more interested in the game when she's older. If we're successful at having a baby early next year, it will proably be 2 years before we do it again, so it will definitely be a different trip (and with 2, maybe even MORE exhausting).