I should just have a paragraph saved to excuse my long absences from the blog so that I can skip trying to come up with a story as to where I’ve been for almost a month but I don’t so I have to rewrite it each time. Sorry I’ve been MIA. Work’s been crazy, I’ve been traveling, etc., etc., etc.
So, back to the trip.
Oliver decided to be a champion napper while we were in Richmond so our days were short but we still managed to see a lot of the city. Jennifer and Tom live a few blocks away from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, which gets my vote for the most amazing art museum in the country for this reason alone - it is 100 percent free all the time. That is such a relief to the parents of a toddler who couldn’t imagine blowing any money on admission when their kid is pretty likely to only want to spend 15 minutes inside. We went to the museum a few times while we were there. They had a great Chuck Close exhibit and their permanent collection was really impressive. Oliver did okay (and only okay) in the museum so we never stayed for long.
We also found a cute children’s bookstore in Richmond which now has the distinction of being the site of Oliver’s first ever bloody nose. He tripped on a display and banged his face into their playhouse. So fun. We did get a great book there, though, and Oliver was sufficiently embarrassed by the experience.
On Thursday night we went with Jennifer and Tom and some of their friends to the Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens in Richmond for their Flowers After 5 program. On Thursday nights during the summer, they have wine tastings and live music in the gardens. The weather was beautiful, the gardens were spectacular, the wine was drinkable, the company was entertaining, and the music was ... awful. Seriously, the world’s worst cover duo. A man and a woman in their late 40s singing some of the worst top 40 songs ever written. There was an area set aside for dancing that stood painfully empty the whole night except for one determined little tiny dancer.
He thought they were AMAZING. And they thought he was, too. Every time he’d come up and dance they’d talk to him over the microphone and the guy playing the guitar would make all sorts of silly faces at him. It was surreal. But even if I don’t always agree with his taste in tunes, I am glad that he appreciates music and loves to dance.
When we could tear him away from the band he played some soccer. You should have seen him run up and down this hill. So impressive.
We managed to see and do so much in the four days we were there and we are so grateful to Jennifer and Tom for letting us stay with them. But our visit came to an end and before we knew it it was time to pack up the car and head back. Our plan was to drive to Knoxville the first day, Little Rock the second and make it home the third and it all went according to plan. I was a little worried that Oliver would be a nightmare the second and third days but he did great. Part of what made the car times so easy was that we made sure to schedule long breaks where Oliver could run around and let off some steam. Most of the time that was in a fast food restaurant with a playscape but on the second day of our trip home we decided to stop at the Memphis Children’s Museum when we drove through town since it was one of the museums we could get into for free with our Austin membership. It was HUGE and Oliver loved running around it. And we loved it because it was free and because it wore Oliver out enough for him to nap from Memphis to Little Rock.
The last night of our vacation we stayed in downtown Little Rock and returned to the splash pad that had been such a favorite on our first night.
It was such a great vacation. People still think we are crazy when I tell them we drove over three thousand miles with a 16 month old but it was absolutely perfect. I loved getting to spend so much time just the three of us with no work, animals, etc. to distract us. It took a few days for Oliver to adjust back to our normal schedule when we got back but it wasn’t anything too dramatic (honestly, the biggest adjustment was that he had gotten used to nursing three times a day while we were away and we made him go back to once a day when he got home).
We are already planning our road trip for next year. I’m thinking Yosemite but nothing’s set in stone yet.
I’ll be back soon (hopefully tomorrow) with an update on what we’ve been up to since we got back and on a pretty exciting development(al milestone).
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