A Month of Firsts

Christmas came and went and we were faced the long winter months. My sister and her husband lived in Northern Florida at the time and we had more family in the Florida Keys. We took the opportunity to escape the great white north. With my doctors blessing, we packed up and headed south. Babies are incredibly portable at that age. I’m definitely a person who likes to be on the go (as almost any of my friends can tell you) and I was pleasantly surprised that my son traveled so well. The only trouble we encountered was that because he so loved the ride (he slept through most of it), his days and nights were messed up once again. So I got very little sleep on the trip down because when the car stopped he was bright eyed and ready to be adored. Everyone else was exhausted, but he was ready to take on the world. After two very long days in the car we made it to my sister and her husbands. My Dad continued down to the Keys and my sister, mom, Alex, and I would follow after some much needed rest in Jacksonville. We took the baby and explored northern Florida. As expected, he was adored by the staff in my sister’s office. We took him to the beach and to St Augustine (the oldest city in the USA). Alex experienced many firsts. His first ‘buggy ride” was in the horse drawn carriage that took us on a tour of St Augustine. My mother and I went to “Marineland” and he got to see his first dolphins (ok, he was 9 weeks old, so if you ask him, the memory may be fuzzy).

My sister took some time off work and we headed further south. Three of my cousins lived in the Florida Keys on an island called Big Pine Key (home of the endangered key deer, for you trivial pursuit buffs). The weather was beautiful. We went to Key West and had our picture taken at the buoy that marks the most southern point of the US. We visited Hemingway House and saw the six toed cats (yes, I said six). They really do exist. Look it up on Google!

It was a great visit, but a little odd at times. One cousin and his wife had just become parents of twin girls almost exactly one month after Alex was born. Unfortunately one of the twins had colic. The poor thing was miserable. It made me count my blessings that I had such a happy and content baby. We had stayed at a different family member’s house, which was blessedly quieter. My many family member’s definitely doted on Alex, almost to the point that I felt a little abandoned. Indeed, if it had not been for the fact that I was breastfeeding, I don’t know that I would have even seen him very much during our time there.

I did have one scare while we were in the Keys. Or it seemed like a crisis at the time. As I have said earlier, Alex was breast fed. One evening, my sister and I had left to run an errand. Ever demanding, Alex got hungry. He was not about to wait for me to return to eat. So my mother decided to try the soy formula I had left in my diaper bag. It was what the hospital gave me when we were dismissed and had just never taken it out. With a little coaxing, he took it fine, but got very sick that night. He had never thrown up like that before. Once he settled down and went back to sleep, I sat in the living of my cousins at 1:00 am and cried. I have always been the kind of person that stays calm under crisis, but falls apart when it was all over. I had been so frightened. It made me wonder if I was cut out for this. But exhausted, I finally got back to sleep and the perspective was much better when I woke up

Eventually we headed back to Minnesota and our first adventure was over. Time to go back to the real world.