Greetings from New Hampshire

...and tomorrow, McKenna and I are coming home. With a LOT of new stuff. I'm really not setting a good example for McKenna with my shopping habits.

We have had a great time here visiting my dad and stepmom, but as I predicted, the shopping was INcredible. Such fantastic deals!!! Everywhere! When I packed my stuff, I pretty much knew that I wasn't going to be coming home with everything tomorrow. American Airlines only allows two 50# bags per ticketed passenger, and since McKenna is not a ticketed passenger, we had to squeeze all our stuff into two suitcases. And to check a third bag costs $80.

So tonight, my stepmom and I worked on getting all my stuff into two suitcases (one of them is not the one I brought) and then when they come out to visit us in May, they will bring the other suitcase full of some of the stuff that I brought, and will probably ship a box full of the other stuff.

The vast majority of the things that we bought were for McKenna, although I got some stuff too. Here's a quick list...about $500 worth of clothes ranging in sizes from 12 months to 3T for McKenna that I got for less than $200 (a LOT of them were bought at secondhand stores and on incredible sales), two pairs of jeans for me, about six t-shirts for me, a new pair of New Balance sneakers for me, an Ocean Wonders mat with mobile for McKenna, quite a few toys for McKenna, four jars of jams, a 2 quart Pyrex measuring cup, a pasta cooker, a potato cooker, a walker thingy for McKenna, tons and tons of stuffed animals and Beanie Babies on sale, a Dooney and Bourke wallet on sale for $26, a black and off-black Dooney and Bourke bag on sale for $66 (gift from dad for my birthday next month), some hats for McKenna, some bibs, a L.L. Bean t shirt and hat for P (we were at the actual store in Maine!), and postcards and stickers and other crap for scrapbooking. All in all, a GREAT shopping trip, and she's definitely set for quite a while. I made it a rule about a month ago that I wouldn't buy anything else for her smaller than 12 months, and I think pretty soon I'm going to have to make it a rule that I don't buy anything smaller than 18 months! She's now solidly in 6-9 and 9-12 month stuff. Almost everything that I brought on the trip that was 3-6 month stuff was either too short, too tight, or was on the way out.

And she did GREAT on the plane, by the way. I'm not hopeful for how she's going to do on the plane ride home since we take off at noon, but we'll see how it goes. On the plane here, I nursed her at takeoff, she fell asleep in my arms after that, and slept all the way until we landed. The worst thing about the trip was that American, even though I checked the Chicco AT THE GATE, failed to put it ON the plane and I had no stroller or car seat for McKenna. Talk about being fit to be tied. It was a really ugly scene. They gave us this Evenflo piece of crap to take her to my dad's house in, and then American showed up at my dad's house at 5 am with the Chicco. Talk about a mess.

The trip overall has been fantastic. Thursday we spent the day shopping at the outlets in Kittery, Maine...Friday my stepmom took me around to all the great secondhand stores in Portsmouth (their Children's Orchard blows ours away in Dallas)...Saturday we went to Freeport to go to THE original L.L. Bean store and all the outlets surrounding it...and today we walked on the beach in Portsmouth, went out to lunch at a great seafood restaurant, and then walked around downtown Portsmouth. This has been my first trip to photograph after learning how to scrapbook, and I really think I did a good job capturing the trip with my camera. The crack dealer always told me that after you start scrapbooking, you'll take pictures totally differently, and boy, was she right. I was taking pictures of the most random inane stuff because I was envisioning layouts in my head, and every time I had an opportunity to get a free brochure, business card, catalog, or anything of that sort, I did it...so I can use them in my layouts. So we'll see how they all come out. All I can say is, God LOVE whoever invented digital cameras. The best thing about digital cameras is that you don't have to develop every picture...if some of them come out bad, you just hit the delete button!

I finished a book here...The Deep End of the Ocean...watched two movies...Walk the Line and Fever Pitch...and even managed to get in two hours of stitching on In the Arms of An Angel the other night. But it's been exhausting being here taking care of McKenna full time without P. I really truly did not realize how much he does to take care of McKenna until I was here without him. Don't get me wrong, it's been fantastic spending all this time with McKenna. Very reminiscent of the time I was with her on maternity leave, except it's more fun now. She's more smiley, and every day we were here, she was doing something new. For example, she can almost sit up by herself now. She can (and wants to) sit in a high chair at the table when we eat, and she's expressing a lot of curiosity about just what exactly we are putting in our mouths at the table that she can't have. After I bring her into bed with me in the morning when she wakes up, we go back to sleep together as normal, but now when she wakes up before me, instead of just squawking to get my attention, she either pats me on the face with her hand to wake me up or pulls on my shirt to wake me up. She can now roll completely over by herself. She can scoot around on her butt so she can see a different direction. And she, seriously, idolizes me. I know it's normal for kids to really have a thing for their mommies, but she just stares at me nonstop when my dad or stepmom are holding her! It's incredible! And she wanted to nurse a lot while I was here, which means that I got a MUCH needed vacation from my breast pump. However, because I had to constantly be on duty with her, it really wore me out from time to time, and I have a feeling I'm going to need a few days to recuperate once I get home to Dallas!

So here's a shout out to my husband, who probably won't read this blog until way after we come home...P, we love you, we miss you, and I don't know what I would do without you. You are a wonderful father and husband, and I promise, no more vacations without you!

See you all when I come home! Send good thoughts up north for a GREAT flight home tomorrow!