Atlanta Trip Report
September 7th, 2008We spent Labor Day weekend in Atlanta visiting my family. We packed the car on Wednesday night so that we could hit the road as soon as we finished work on Thursday. We headed to Davidson on Thursday night to stay with my parents, and we started our license plate game. We got the idea from Audrey Podrey who recently took a road trip to Ohio. Looks like we even found the same printable map on the internet. We had two colors, and the yellow states represent the ones that we spotted on the first half of our trip. The green states were new ones that we spotted on the second half of our trip, and the ones with the names highlighted in green were ones we spotted in both halves. It was just something fun to do while chatting and singing along to the iPod. Maddie didn’t help us spot any plates, but it is something we can look forward to doing with her when she’s a bit older.
Maddie was a very good baby for the majority of our driving. She slept most of the way to Davidson on Thursday evening and most of the way to Atlanta. She started to get a little fussy about 5 minutes from my parents house and then again about 30 minutes away from our hotel. We made some stops to stretch her baby legs and grab food for ourselves (and to feed her, of course). This is the first trip where we both rode in the front seats for the entire trip. Since we have no way of seeing her in her rear facing carseat, we checked on her periodically with the camera. Ha!
We had to make the entire trip back on Monday, which was a bit less pleasant. It seemed like the traffic was increasing exponentially every time we returned to the interstate after a stop, but it was never too slow. After about 5 driving hours, Maddie was DONE with the car seat. We had to make quite a few stops in the last hour or so of the trip (which stretched into 2-3 hours due to frequent stops). I don’t think we’ll plan for a drive longer than 4-5 hours at a time for a while. Even with several stops to stretch her baby legs and play a bit, she was not a happy camper. We were glad when we finally made it home!
My parents went down to Atlanta at the same time as us, though they stayed a bit longer on Monday than we did. Gabe and I left my parents’ house in the morning and made a stop at their Harris Teeter on the way out of town. We were excited to try our new shopping cart cover. Gabe took Maddie out of the carseat, and we were walking towards the shopping carts. At this point, I looked over at Gabe and my brain tried to process what I was seeing, “um, why are there carrots all over Maddie’s leg…OH.” I rushed back to the car to get the diaper bag while Gabe tried to figure out how to carry Maddie without getting poop all over his clothes. As I was getting the diaper bag out of the backseat, I glanced over at the carseat and OH MY GOD. What a disaster!! I grabbed the carseat, and we took both the baby and the carseat into the bathroom at Harris Teeter to clean up the mess. Ah, parenting. I knew the day was coming when we’d have to deal with a massive blowout that affected more than Maddie and her clothing. After using at least two dozen paper towels, I’ll have to say that I’m pretty impressed with how well the carseat could be wiped clean. I’m also very thankful with the timing. It could have been much worse if it had happened after our trip the grocery store. I don’t want to think about what the scene would have been if she had been squishing around in that mess for several hours. Gross!
The shopping cart cover worked well, and we used it for both the grocery store and the restaurants along the way. Maddie seemed to be much happier sitting in the high chair like a big girl versus sitting in her carseat or stroller!
After we checked into the hotel and dropped off some of our suitcases, we headed over to my grandparents house late Friday afternoon. Maddie’s great grandparents were very excited to see her again. She has changed quite a bit since our last visit. They were quite impressed with all her crawling and developing personality.
The first night in the hotel went pretty smoothly. Maddie wasn’t too fussy, so it was a lot better than last time when we were scared we’d get kicked out of the room. The second night in the hotel did not go quite as well. Maddie was pretty upset for a few hours. I wasn’t as stressed about it as I was on our previous trip, but I wondered whether we were disturbing other guests. It took us a while to get her to fall asleep. Then, we had a fire alarm at about 5am. That was quite disorienting! My parents were staying in the same hotel, but yet I was surprised to see them when they found us in the parking lot. Maddie thought that it was time to play, and she was smiling at everyone. When we evacuated our room, we made sure to put on some clothes and grab the laptops, the small camera (the big one we left at my grandparents house), the car keys, a pacifier, and a toy for Maddie. Fortunately, we didn’t have to stay out in the parking lot for very long, and we were able to return to our rooms after a few minutes. It took us a little while to get Maddie back to sleep, but then we were able to sleep for a few more hours. The last night was fine, but we heard another baby crying all night. I was glad that it wasn’t us, but I also realized that others would be blaming us for the crying baby, anyway. Oh well.
My parents had plans on Saturday with the local bridge tournament, so we headed to visit with my grandparents separately. We visited with them for a few hours and then headed to have dinner with my aunt, uncle, and cousin. We went out to Macaroni Grill…you know, one of those restaurants where you sit down and servers take your order and bring you your food? Maddie was great the entire meal! It was nice to be able to go to a REAL restaurant!
On Sunday, we had plans to get together with everyone on my dad’s side of the family, including my parents. We spent most of the day at my grandparents house and had a nice time visiting with family (and ate plenty of food, as always). I was excited to take some four generations photos.
We had a great trip, though we learned that Maddie definitely has her limits when it comes to riding in the car. After our Gatlinburg experience and this one, I think we’ll have to make sure that we don’t attempt too much driving in one day for a while!
I hope to have time to sort through the rest of the photos soon. In the meantime, I’ve posted a few additional photos here, here, and here.
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