Tuesday, May 30, 2006

boring travelogue, part 1

The great thing about being gone for a week is that I have accumulated a treasure trove of stuff to write about ... and I'll probably forget half of it before I get a chance to post it all. Anyway, here we go ...

Liza and I flew to Baltimore on Tuesday to attend Jason's sister's graduation. Jason wasn't able to get the time off to go himself, so it was a ladies' trip. After all the excitement of her sitting up for the first time that morning, I would have been content with a grumpy baby on the plane - but she behaved well, and all of us (me, Liza, and 400 pounds of luggage and carseat) made it to Baltimore on time. Wednesday we got to see Susan graduate - as a side note, what sort of idiot plans a graduation ceremony for 2pm on a Wednesday?? Anyway, here's the smartypants at the honors recognition ceremony:

And afterwards, with her boyfriend:

And with a couple of relatives:

Liza was very well-behaved up until the honors recognition ceremony actually started, at which point she decided to talk. About everything. Loudly. Out to the hallway we went, where we changed her diaper, walked around, and got her to shut up for a bit. We went back inside the auditorium just in time to see Susan walk across the stage, and five minutes later we were back in the hallway, talking again. We skipped all the boring speeches, and made it back just in time for the provost to say it was over - now THAT'S good timing.

The actual graduation ceremony was smack in the middle of Liza's normal nap time, so she and I hung out at the hotel while the rest of our party went to the ceremony. We rejoined them for dinner, at which we proved that crayons write better on fabric tablecloths than they do on paper, and yes, babies will eat hummous. We went to Susan's apartment for dessert, and Jason's aunt and mother kept trying to feed Liza all of their cake and ice cream. Liza, meanwhile, managed to cruise around three sides of a large coffee table, at something faster than her usual glacial pace, so I let the doting grandmas feed her whatever they wanted.

Thursday we met my parents at the aquarium in Baltimore - in a spectacular feat of convergent timing, they managed to make the trip down from Delaware and pull into the same parking garage we were pulling into - they were the car in front of us at the ticket line! Not bad considering they called me 5 minutes before to tell me they were lost near the science center on the opposite side of the harbor.

Anyway, Liza was in favor of the aquarium for about the first 10 minutes, after which she decided that she'd had enough and cried for the next 45 minutes or so. The aquarium doesn't allow strollers, so I had her in the hip carrier, and it took forever to get her to go to sleep. I must have sung the same lullaby to her, oh, 45 times.

Friday we flew to Cleveland ... but I'll have to write about that later. It's off to the grocery store for me!

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