Trippin'

A few weeks ago David announced he was going to take Sam camping in Yosemite. Faced with the unexpected freedom of having to care for only 2 children I decided to drive 6 1/2 hours north to visit my parents. The drive up was quite surprisingly... not horrible. The visit itself was great. But the drive home had me mustering all of my good sense to not drive off the embankment. Clara did not want to be in the car. Actually, she wouldn't have minded the car if she could only have been in my arms; but this is illegal as you know. So I stopped several times to calmly ease her into sleep in my arms. But as soon as her sweet tush hit the car seat she would wake up and scream. After one such attempt we hit an unfortunate strip of highway which had no hospitable exits. So Clara cried. Despite attempts from "the Binkifier" (Jackson's self-appointed moniker) to soothe her and replace her binky from his place next to her in the car, she cried. Despite me singing to her, she cried. Thoughts of the studies on how continuous crying can detrimentally alter a baby's brain, mixed with flashes of news stories on families abducted while parked on the sides of highways. I couldn't decide what horrible fate to choose. So I did what any good mother would do when faced with such a stressful situation: I turned up the music really loud. There was no hope for Clara in either of the two possible scenarios, but my sanity could still be saved. So with Blondie belting it out on my car stereo I went to my happy place and Clara soon fell asleep. That's not entirely true. First she stopped crying and went completely catatonic as if her unanswered cries had caused her very soul to be wrenched from her tiny body. Then she fell asleep.

And now here are some pictures taken shortly before that catastrophic car ride.




And a few pics from the Yosemite trip that David was kind enough to share.