We have traveled out of town 4 of the last 5 weekends, and I’m wiped out. The bad news about traveling with Jack is that babies need a lot of stuff. His clothes take up approximately 1 square foot of real estate in our luggage – his toys, diapers, travel bed, car seat, stroller, nebulizer, my diaper bag and my pump take up basically the rest of our luggage allowance / trunk space. So Bryan gets to pack one backpack of clothing, while I look like I’m moving my entire household overseas for the foreseeable future. Additionally, the stuff Jack needs to travel on the weekend is basically the same stuff he needs during the week, so unlike Bryan and I, who used to leave suitcases unpacked for weeks at a time, Jack requires laundry and unpacking and sorting right away. His pincer grip is coming along quite nicely, but his motor skills in general haven’t quite advanced to a place where he can do any of these things on his own, so mommy has been unpacking and repacking every week for 4 of the last 5 weeks, and frankly she’s had enough for the summer.

The good news is that Jack is a dream to travel with. He will sleep anywhere. He will eat anything. We can leave him with babysitters he doesn’t know. He also does extremely well on airplanes. Our experiences flying so far have gone something like this:
Enter airplane. See new people. Smile. Make cute cooing noises.
Look out airplane window. See new places! Smile! Make cute cooing noises!
Plane begins to taxi. Start eating. Sigh. Pass out for remainder of flight.

This is basically how I used to fly (minus the cute cooing noises). This is still how Bryan flies (minus liking other people at the airport). I sincerely hope Jack takes after his daddy in this regard, since I’ve developed a somewhat overwhelming fear of flying (which to be fair, is less a fear of flying and more a fear of the plane no longer flying while at 30,000 feet, but whatever).

So all in all, this bodes well for our future, because Bryan and I like to travel. And while I’ve had enough of the packing and unpacking, we’ve loved getting to see friends and family, and I doubt we will ever have enough of that, so hopefully Jack will continue to be a happy traveler far into the future.

And at 9 months old he has now been to 5 of the 50 states, which ain’t bad. I’m rooting for Hawaii for his next stop.

So anyway - here are the pics from our mini vacation in Denver two weekends ago. Enjoy!