Finally back home

Yeesh, what a mess our travel was. All successful, but between Tyler's pox, pink eye, and a mysterious third ailment that I'll discuss later along with some sort of super-cold that's kept me feeling like garbage for the past three days, flying was not fun.

Let's recap Christmas, though. Tyler was an absolute gentleman. He played with everyone, let people feed him, napped well, and adjusted pretty well to his new surroundings, despite a series of illnesses that would greatly hamper any normal baby. We even got to show him off to a few other Juneau resident friends, mostly people we ran into at the airport. Next time maybe I'll just layover in Juneau for a few hours and catch all the people I know that way. Seems more efficient.

Anyway, we packed up a lot of our stuff, and a lot of Sandlin's stuff too, and I woke up feeling like a hot mess. I took some painkillers before the flight out of Juneau and got Tyler as situated as we could. He looked pretty horrible, though, all dark circles under the eyes. Still a charming smile, though. We got some complements from a lot of our fellow travelers. The flight from Juneau to Seattle went pretty well, and we got to see Aunt Sandlin and Uncle Matt one more time. Apologizing profusely for bringing so darn many germs into their house, we enjoyed some great soup and put Tyler down for a fitful sleep. He woke up in a fussy mood several times, but we managed to get a game of dominion in nonetheless.

And side note: Raoul is terrified of me. Just me, though. He would hiss and slink away every time I came into the room. I did manage to get close enough to let him sniff me at one point in the early morning, but something about my intimidatingly manly presence seemed to irk him to no end. I'm pretty butch.

I went down to sleep pretty early and nearly set the bed on fire with my heroic fever. Jess played supermom and took care of Tyler while he woke up periodically with hurting-sounding cries. I did my best to keep myself rested, but I ended up dosing myself heavily with drugs, eating a PB and J sandwich at 1:00 AM (I was hungry!) and then sleeping in another room on the futon. Rough night.

The flight from Seattle to Austin started off well enough. Tyler had a bottle and took a nap during most of the ascent. After that it got a little spotty. There were times when he was fine and dandy, making cute faces at the girls in the seats behind us, and other times when he was a bundle of nerves and complaints. He liked walking around as much as he could, though that isn't something you can do a lot of on a plane. We did our best, but were quite relieved to land, finally.

Last night Tyler went to sleep at an almost-normal time to the sound of neighborhood fireworks, though decidedly later than normal, and only needed his parents to come in once. He sounded like he was having a rough time of something, again, but we weren't sure what. Eventually I beat-boxed and danced him to sleep. I slept soundly, in between bouts of not sleeping soundly, and woke up at nearly noon. Thanks for the resting time, Jess!

Well Jess convinced me that we needed to go shopping this morning, so we went out and got some food, and while we were out, I spied what, among his other illnesses, has been making Tyler so fussy lately. New tooth! Finally! It's a top one on his right side, and it's just barely visible under the gums. We'll put up pictures of his new smile when it comes in more fully. I'm starting to get over my cold, or maybe the dayquil is just working better now. Rough travel for all involved.

-N