San Diego

We left Paso at 8pm after some last minute packing.


Marshall was wide eyed and excited for his first road trip! Oh wait...


I was nervous driving so far with the baby. I was worried he was going to cry the whole way... or want to eat every hour. Usually he's really good in the car, but the farthest we've gone is to San Luis which is only about 30 minutes.

Luckily he slept the whole time. He woke up once, nursed, then slept the rest of the way. It was pretty late when we arrived.

Clearly the 5.5 hour trip didn't phase Marshall:

I fed the baby and we all fell asleep about 3am. Then woke back up at 6:15, got ready, and I drove Jerad to the house where his brother and boss were staying. We decided to get our own hotel so everyone else didn't have to wake up every time the baby did:)

Marshall and I got back to our room around 7:30, fell asleep around 8, and slept until 10.

I had thought about using cloth diapers for the trip. We've used them exclusively since about the second day after Marsh was born. I wasn't worried that it would be inconvenient, but it meant that we'd have to go 4 days without washing them and I was worried they'd be hard to get clean. So, I bought a package of disposable dipes and some baby wipes (we use cloth wipes at home).

BIG MISTAKE.

In the 7 weeks we've been using the cloth, we've had a few tiny diaper leaks. As in, some poo gets on the clothes (usually on the legs and only because we didn't do a good job putting the cover on) and makes a spot maybe the size of a quarter. In the 2 days we've now been using disposable, we've had 3 major blowouts. Besides not containing poo as well, they smell funny, and are so not as cute as the cloth. Plus not as soft! Would you want to wear paper underwear? Clearly, I'm not a fan. Next trip will be cloth all the way...

Anyways, because of the blowouts, we started our morning with a sink bath:


Then we got dressed and headed out to go shopping at the huge Outlets they have here. I was more excited about it than Marshall was:

He fell asleep in the car, and stayed asleep while I loaded him in the stroller. I ate lunch at a Mexican place then got to work. The Outlets were amazing!

I checked out a bunch of stores, got Marshall a cute outfit, and me some new bras. Then he started to loose his shit. Literally. First he had another diaper blowout, then he was so hungry he thought he was going to die and started that cry-so-hard-he-can't-breathe thing. Now, I'm all for breastfeeding in public. Restaurants, the park, the theater, no problem. But how do you feed your baby somewhere that is basically like Disneyland? There wasn't even anywhere to sit if I'd wanted to. I ended up going to Motherhood Maternity and nursing in a fitting room so at least it was somewhat peaceful. By that time Marshall was over it so we headed back to the hotel room.

After a little baby wipe bath and some more milk he was in a much better mood:


Then he passed out for a few hours. And when I say "passed out," I mean PASSED OUT:


When he woke up he had some nakey time which always cheers him up:



I thought about taking him down to the pool so I could read and get a little sun (I brought an umbrella for him), but he just wanted to eat, sleep, eat, sleep and I figured he'd had such a busy last few days we should take it easy so he wouldn't be over-tired for dinner tonight and then all day tomorrow.

So while he did that, I watched some stupid movie, and read a trashy book. Jerad ended up working really late (its 9:30pm as I'm writing this and he's still not back... after having 3 hrs of sleep), so I ordered pizza. Hopefully Marshall sleeps well tonight even though he's slept most of the day!

Marshall ended up waking right as Daddy got home and boy was he happy to see him!





I'm happy to report that everyone slept well that night.

Monday we all slept in then went down stairs for the breakfast buffet. Make your own waffles, mmmm!


If I could eat one food for the rest of my life, it would probably be waffles.

After breakfast we headed to the pool. It was beautiful and no one else was there.



Jerad and I got some sun:

and Marshall got some shade.



Then it was time to relax in our room and let the baby boy nap. Somehow he got an arm out of his swaddle blanket and slept with it flopping out. It was pretty adorable:)



For dinner we went to Marcus's house (Jerad's boss), and ate with him, his daughter, and Jerad's brother Joey. The food was delicious and Jerad surprised me with flowers.

Marshall was awake for about an hour before we left for dinner, so I thought he'd sleep through the whole thing. He's usually only awake for about 45 min to an hour and a half at a time. Boy was I wrong! He stayed awake almost the entire time, probably about 4 hours.

That night he slept 6 hours straight, a new record. It seems like that would be a good thing, but not so much. Normally he nurses every 3 hours. I woke up after about 5 hours and 45 minutes so engorged that you could feel the individual milk ducts. It was super painful. I pumped while he slept and got over 11 ounces, a record for me too! It worked out well because we had bottles to use while we were out and about.

Tuesday morning we didn't get moving until after 10am so we missed the waffles:( We went back to the pool until noon for some more sunshine.


Then we checked out. Only... we couldn't leave because Jerad had lost the keys. We looked through the bags and stroller, nothing. He got them to let him back in our room and searched EVERYWHERE, and nothing. Marshall and I hung out by the car while he re-traced all of his steps.

Finally we took out literally every item out of every suitcase and found them. He'd packed them. 45 minutes after checking out, we were able to load the baby in the car and leave. We went back to the outlets and had lunch at Ruby's, the 50's diner place. We both got new sunglasses, Jerad bought a few new pairs of shoes and I got a surprisingly stylish pair of Crocs as well:

After we had shopped till we dropped, it was time to head home. Marshall slept the entire way. I pumped in the car and would feed him a bottle every few hours basically in his sleep. We woke him up once to change his diaper. I think it took us about 5.5 hours to get home even though we hit some traffic.

When we got home it was bath time, followed by cuddle time.



Then back to life as normal.

It looks like Jerad will be getting more jobs down there, so hopefully we'll be back soon!