California Girl
Sorry for the long gap since the last entry, but we just got back from a wonderful 10-day trip to California to visit all seven of Lux's grandparents, meet Aunt Danielle for the first time, and attend a family wedding.Flying: This being our first trip with a baby, we asked for advice from a couple of United agents and several friends on how to make it as painless as possible. Result: United agents are worthless and friends are very helpful. Our flight was a non-stop from Baltimore to Los Angeles early on the morning of September 12th. If it weren't for Lux, we would have missed the flight for sure. We were running a little late getting to BWI, then the parking shuttle took an eternity to get to the terminal. Check-in went smoothly and we had maybe 45 minutes before takeoff. No problem, we thought. Then we turned the corner. The line to go through security filled up the winding part and went off down the hallway farther that we could see. There is no way we would get through that on time. Then, we noticed a separate entrance labeled "strollers and wheelchairs" with no line! That got us to the front of the line and on our way. We took Lux as a lap child (free!) and gate checked the stroller and car seat. On the way out, we had a free seat next to us which was really nice. Chips recommended taking a boppy pillow to help hold the baby during the trip, but we thought that might be too big and so we used one of those inflatable travel neck pillows and that worked great for taking the weight off the arm that was holding the baby. We also took Vicky's suggestion and packed extra shirts for each of us in case of a mid-course poo-splosion. Finally, we breast-fed her on takeoff and landing to keep her ears from hurting. Thankfully, Lux was an angel and slept most of the flight. The lame old 757 didn't have a baby changing in the bathroom so we changed her on the floor of the galley once and on the empty seat next to us.
We then got to spend the afternoon visiting with Grandma Paula and Grandpa John before heading off the the rehearsal dinner. The dinner was at the Reel Inn on PCH in Malibu and it was a blast. The bride was Paul's second cousin on his Mom's side, Kit Pongetti. She is a talented actress and musician (you can see some clips here) who lives in LA and was marrying Mark Stegeman, a writer for the TV show Scrubs. The Pongetti family has been in the US for 103 years now and they have done a great job multiplying in that time. It was great to see so many of them at one time (probably the biggest gathering since the 100-year reunion in 2000) and get to introduce them all to Lux. And, we got to meet lots of Kit and Mark's friends, who are lots of fun. The evening was topped by Karaoke renditions of many classic songs, and singing them was made all the more challenging by a balky Karaoke machine that kept jumbling up the lyrics so they were unreadable!
On Saturday, Paul's sister Danielle came down from the Bay Area to go to the wedding and she finally got to meet Lux. The wedding itself was stunningly beautiful. They had rented a ranch up in a canyon in Malibu and the weather was perfect. Lux got the hiccups really bad during the ceremony, but it was outside and I think only the people within a few rows of us could really hear. Susan had a mighty hard time not breaking into laughter, though! :-)
Sunday was Paula's 65th birthday. We celebrated by going to a great Japanese restaurant in LA's Little Tokyo. Mom had bought Lux a special Asian themed outfit for the occasion. We got our own private room and were served an exquisite meal that had just the right amount of adventurousness.
On Monday, Susan and Paula went off to lunch together leaving Paul alone with Lux, probably the longest time he had taken care of the baby alone to this point. They had a great time, strolling around the Palisades Village, stopping for lunch in a cafe, then going to the park to have a bottle of breast milk and meet some other babies playing in the sand. Lux got to try the swings for the first time in her life and she seemed to like them plenty. That evening, we went to visit Ron and Lillie for dinner and Henry (4 1/2) and Alan (2) got to meet Lux while the parents caught up.
Most of Tuesday was spent imitating the "rich and jobless" set which seems to make up much of the population of LA. We ate at another fancy Palisades cafe, got an Iced Blended at the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, then shopped all up and down Montana Ave in Santa Monica. We went to fancy baby stores like Sophie Fox and Cranky Pants where we got Lux her coolest outfit to date. Susan found Kiehl's, the shrine to expensive beauty products highlighted by a skeleton covered with celebrity shopper's signatures. We ended with a nice drink at Wolfgang Puck's Cafe. That evening we had an amazing dinner with Fiona and Rick and finally got to meet their daughter Erica. Somehow Fiona was able to cook a superb cioppino despite having spent a long traumatic day in the hospital with Erica.
Ok, this blog entry is getting too long. I'm going to hold off on the second half of our California adventure until next time...
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