road trip, part 3: Tacoma

After five days in Sequim, we headed to Tacoma to visit Jason's cousin, Mike, his wife, Megan, and their little boy, Jack. Megan's mom was also there for a short stay. I have no photos. We were there with only enough time to eat dinner, chat it up for a couple of hours, and hit the hay. It was good to see them, and so sweet of them to let us stay even though they had more company due in the next night.

Mike and Megan are in their residencies as doctors, so they had to get up early Monday to start in with their 80+ hour work weeks (aaaaaack!!). You can imagine then our horror at Zoralee choosing that very night to be the loudest yet with her vocal experimentations. She would breathe in deep and let rip anything ranging from a sigh to a shriek. We, of course, were ringing our hands, tiptoeing around the room and making discouraging faces at her, wishing she'd just be quiet. And naturally, the more we interacted with her, the happier she got. Which was funny, so we were trying to laugh quietly, which made it harder to stop laughing. It was a paradoxical half hour.

We wadded up a blanket and covered the crack between the door and the floor. When it appeared to be over, we tried to put Zoralee down for bed. Nope! She then started in, seriously, on the most cryful she had been in a very long time. Would not go to sleep. Uncanny, this sense babies have of knowing what you want and somehow doing the opposite. What lousy guests we were.

In EC news for this trip (which I've forgotten to mention until now), Zoralee was able to carry on with pottying on command, no matter our locale, if we were observant enough to catch her cues. Granted, sometimes business was stalled by the variation in bathroom decor that required her careful scrutiny, but she recognized toilets at any house and knew what to do. I thought that traveling would make EC too hard, but it was actually a progressive time for us, because whenever we drove, I was monitoring her more intently for a few hours at a whack than I do at home. She even used a Tupperware bucket in the car with success several times. Is that crazy or what?!

Monday, we were off to Portland in the drizzle and fog. And I gots me some pictures of them apples. Apples being a slang word that refers to our time in Portland.