October Travels
A few weeks back, I noticed that there was a tiny gap in my work and travel schedule on the weekend of October 8th, which corresponded with a perfect storm of reasons to go to California: Grandpa John's 71st birthday was Friday, Cal was set to play UCLA at the Rose Bowl on Saturday and Granddad Dan had already bought four tickets, and my old friend (and best man) Ron was having a big 40th birthday party on Saturday. On the other hand, we couldn't really imaging hauling the whole family out to California once again, just a month before our annual Big Game/Thanksgiving trip. So, Lux and I decided to just be impulsive and I got a pair of frequent flier award tickets from United, leaving Thursday afternoon and returning on the red-eye Sunday night to arrive Monday morning. It was to be our first ever father-daughter bonding weekend with just the two of us traveling together. And, it would give Susan a few days alone with Nick to bond with him without constant interruptions from Lux and remember how easy it is to have just one baby.So, I arrived home on Wednesday night from a 3-day visit to MIT and promptly started packing for our adventure. The next day, Lux and I decided to take the Porsche to Dulles airport, since it was just the two of us, after all. We waved to Mom and Nick as we zoomed off, and Lux said "Dada, go like that!" while making furious shifting movements with her hand. The whole shuttle bus, check-in, security line, plane flight process went extremely well, except for one minor setback when we found we were seated in an exit row and the re-seating process moved us out of Economy Plus with the extra legroom (where we deserved to be, given my Premiere Executive status). When we arrived at the Avis area, our car wasn't ready because of a credit card problem since I had had to cancel my card when someone started making purchases in some province of China. But, the Avis people were very accomodating and quickly got us a brand new PT Cruiser, which Lux was quite excited about, and we were on our way to Paula and John's house.
Thursday night, Lux and I slept in the big bed together and we did fine, until Lux woke up at 4:30AM, still on Eastern time. After a great breakfast, and a video chat with Mom, we went down to the Santa Monica pier to play. We were just planning on walking on the pier and seeing the aquarium, but Lux insisted that she needed to bring her swimsuit. We had a fun time exploring the pier, looking at the birds and waves and fishermen, then we took Lux out onto the beach in her swimsuit. She had a blast playing in the sand, and even walked out to the edge of the waves with me, but got a little scared when a big wave came and knocked her off her feet. We then went out to the mexican restaurant at the end of the pier and had lunch (cheese quesadillas for Lux, of course), before heading home for nap. That evening, we celebrated John's birthday with a lovely dinner and a big chocolate cake shaped like a spider (that Lux greatly enjoyed!). The following morning we headed over to granddad's house, which Lux had been talking about incessently since it meant she would get to see the dogs.
Lux was amazingly comfortable and Granddad Dan and Jane's house, despite being constantly hounded by the three dogs. She quickly turned the tables on them and started trying to force them to eat bones and play with their rubber "bubba" toy, but they weren't too obliging, until Jane started shoving jerky treats into the bones. That got them excited! Lux also spent a lot of time in the yard with Granddad showing off her soccer skills, which are more extensive than I had realized. She kicks well and even put on a few little dribbling exhibitions.
The football game was thrilling. We met up with my old fraternity friends, Nick, Stan, and Larry, at the Cal tailgate party in the country club adjacent to the Rose Bowl. Lux got to see the cheerleaders up close and show off her adorable little Cal cheerleader outfit. We tried to get a picture of her with a cheerleader, but sadly it didn't come out. At the game itself, Lux was astoundingly patient and even interested in the game. The UCLA fans surrounding us we very nice to her and thought she was real cute. They tried to convince her to go to UCLA, and I assured them that it just depended on her SAT scores. :-) We had thought we might leave the game early to get to Ron's party at a reasonable time, but that wasn't to be. A couple of times, Cal got ahead by two scores and looked like they might run away with it, but then UCLA would come storming back, usually on a special-teams play involving Maurice Drew. At the end of the game, UCLA won in the last minute, much to the delight of the 90,000 screaming fans in the Rose Bowl. It was Lux's first time seeing Cal lose live, but she didn't seem to mind, since she slept in my arms for most of the 4th quarter.
After the game, we made a quick cameo at Ron's birthday party, which was getting close to shutting down as we arrived. We just missed Ron's band "The Dad's" playing in the back yard. Still, it was good to see everyone and commiserate about Cal's loss.
On Sunday, we went up to Paradise Cove for a great brunch with Susie and Bob Frankel, and took a long walk on the beach, enjoying the perfect weather, the big waves and the opulent beach homes. After a nap and some more playing with dogs, Lux and I headed off to the airport for our overnight flight home. Lux was a perfect traveler again and slept the whole trip home. We arrived at the house at around 7:00AM and I got to take a nap while Lux went right back to her normal schedule and went to Play School with Mom and Nick.
Now, you would think that such a great trip would just reinforce Lux's bond with me, but somehow the opposite has occurred. Since returning home, Lux has been very insistent that Susan do essentially everything for her (put her to bed, change her diaper, and such). If I try to do anything, she just says "No, Dada, ... Mama do!" I'm not sure why she is doing this, but I hope it passes soon, since it certainly can hurt my feelings.
Nevertheless, on Saturday, we had a great time at the International Gold Cup where we had a posh railside party with a bunch of friends. Lux enjoyed the horses and both Lux and Nick were great all day. Nick got passed around from person to person, charming the ladies, as usual.
Some other accomplishments this week: Nick can now pull himself up to standing anywhere, and is starting to "cruise". Lux saw her first hockey game on TV and has become a huge fan, though she calls it "Ha-Hee". She can even say "puck" and tells the players that they should put it in the net. Nick has had a bit of a setback a nights recently, waking up quite a few times and often ending up sleeping in our bed, but (inexplicably) everyone slept perfectly last night and woke up at 7:30 or later this morning.
Today is an exciting day, since we are heading off to pick up our long-awaited new Subaru Tribeca, and buy Haloween pumpkins for everyone!
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home