SB2k11

That is, Spring Break 2011, woo hoo!!

Nothing says spring break like a trip to California, and returning with a cold/ear infection from hell. We've had a great week despite the latter, and thankfully are headed back to the grind tomorrow with a much healthier, happier baby.

Last Saturday Brian and I put our game faces on and braved the airport for Autumn's second plane trip. This was a whole new ballgame. When we flew to Fresno when she was eight weeks old, she was a peaceful, sleepy little newborn. This time, at 5 1/2 months, we had a true beast on our hands. Autumn has never liked to do one thing for more than about 42 seconds, especially when that one thing involves sitting on our laps with no change of scenery. To her credit, she did sleep a little bit on the flight out, and amused herself with toys for about seven minutes -- which only left us with about an hour-and-a-half of pure scrambling to figure out how to keep the other passengers from throwing us out the window. In the end it was all worth it, because we had a great few days in Santa Cruz. My mom, bless her heart, had transformed their condo into Autumn's own playground, complete with an exersaucer, play mat, millions of new toys and books, and of course a few new outfits. Autumn especially loved all of the work she was able to get done on the exersaucer.

Just gettin' my work done on this here exersaucer

While in Santa Cruz, Autumn also experienced the beach for the first time. She's kind of a vampire -- hates the sun. But she did enjoy watching her feet in the sand, and probably the gross, squishy feel of it between her toes. Then she enjoyed eating her sand-covered feet on the stroller ride home. Another first was at the playground, where Autumn fell in love with the bucket seat swing. We've since taken her to the park by our house for some swing action. Pure bliss.

The water was muddy from the aftermath of the recent tsunami

16 pounds of pure muscle

The flight back to Denver was quite a bit easier. At the time we attributed it to our own parental awesomeness -- we were so sure there was something we did that had finally clicked and transformed our daughter into a cuddly, calm little princess. Autumn slept for about 3/4 of the flight, and was somewhat content with her toys for the remainder. But as it turned out, that night she went to bed very congested and cranky, and woke up a snotty, dinosaur-voiced mess. Poor thing could hardly cry. Being new to the sick baby thing, we called her doctor, who wanted us to bring her in to make sure her breathing was okay. Good thing we did, as it turned out that Autumn had a really bad (Doctor: "I can't find something in this room as red as her ear to show you how bad") ear infection. Thank goodness for antibiotics. Autumn was miserable for the rest of the day, but was already starting to get back to her old self by morning. And heading into the new week, she's almost as good as new. Oh, and she got weighed while at the pediatrician's. Sixteen pounds, holy crap! Just five weeks ago she weighed 13lb 12oz. She also jumped from the 45th percentile to 60th, but the doctor is please so we'll take it. We love this chunky monkey!