D.C. Recap (Day I)

Just got back from taking a few days off to hit Washington, D.C. This is the first in a short series of posts about how it went.

I guess this is what a vacation feels like. Right now Mom-O and I are side by side in a hotel room in Washington D.C., clacking away at our keyboards just before midnight, trying to keep up with our blogs/work. Don't take that the wrong way…it really isn't me bitching that we're on vacation but are still up in the middle of the night working. This has actually been great so far, even though most of the day was spent in the car. I haven't touched twitter. I checked my voicemail once and my e-mail once. Both of us are waaaaay more unplugged from technology and work than we have been in a really long time. So this'll be good. Today is Thursday and we're going to be here until we head out on Monday morning, which now that I think about it is a pretty long time (in a good way).

So today started with me getting up after about three hours of sleep and going into the office butt-early to get everything in order so that I could leave without being stressed about work. Around noon we were in the car, Mom-O, Babe-O and Mom-O-in-Law. Mom-O-in-Law (MIL-O?) is particularly stoked about the trip because she is a genealogy nut who is going to be like a kid in a candy store in the national archives. (While she's there, I plan to behave like a kid in a candy store too, only I'll most likely actually be in a candy store someplace.)

It is about a six-hour drive for us, which meant and awful lot of time for Babe-O in the car. We haven't done a trip this long with here since she was tiny, and even then we just left in the dead of night so that she'd sleep the whole way. This time around we just carved it into two three-hour chunks with a good break in the middle to stretch/eat/play.

Babe-O nailed it. She was awesome. MIL-O was in the backseat to keep her company and she took two big fat naps that pretty much ate up most of the downtime. We made it here no sweat and I have renewed confidence in our ability to travel with the little one.

Once we got here, we checked into the hotel and moved in to our rooms. We ("we" as in "not me") actually went to the trouble of unpacking the suitcases and moving into the dressers and closets, but I guess that'll be kind of nice since we are going to be here for a few days. Babe-O loved the hotel. She rolled around on the beds and was in a generally great mood, so we decided to push our luck and take her out to eat way past her bedtime for the sake of letting her enjoy some of the day out of her car seat.

We went to what turned out to be a completely kickass Italian place. This was the first time in my life that I have been the ONLY white guy in an Italian restaurant, so I knew from the get-go that we were on to someplace special. Babe-O was in a great mood and charmed the hell out of the servers and other guests. She waved at people across the room and impressed our server with how well she sat in her booster seat and ate her kids-eat-free buffet food like a little lady. I was proud as hell to be her Dad and the food was freaking amazing. Good times had by all.

Then we finished up and headed back to the hotel to put her to bed. We are staying in a suite, so she has her own space in the common area where we set up her pack-n-play, which was going to stand in for her crib while she was away. Unfortunately, that plan fell apart a bit when Mom-O decided that it was too risky to have Babe-O sleeping alone by the door to our room, where any run-of-the-mill nutcase could break the door down in the black of night and disappear down the hallway with our girl. Needless to say, as soon as I'm done typing this I'm going to get up to go to the bathroom and almost certainly break my toe on the pack-n-play, which is now crammed in our room with us. On the plus side, she is sleeping soundly and is safe from any would-be invaders that might be prowling the halls.

More to come...