281 Miles

From my front door to Auntie Kara's door. Sam and I are off on another adventure this weekend. We will be leaving Friday afternoon to drive to Houston to visit Auntie Kara. Sam has never been in the car this long so I'm not really sure why I think this is a good idea considering I am going by myself but off we go. We do have a lot of fun "girlie" things planned for the weekend, including a swim in Kara's pool (so we can show off our new swimming skills), a trip to the best Half Price Books ever (in Rice Village), some chick flicks, more shopping, and lots of yummy food.

If you happen to remember me about 2pm CST on Friday send good thoughts my way. Hopefully the traffic and weather gods will be smiling on us and our drive will go quickly!

I'll be sure to let everyone know how we do. Hopefully she will be an angel because her parents LOVE road trips!

60 Days (Give or Take)

This has nothing to do with the week long vacation we just returned from or any of the new exciting things Sam has done but I wanted to post it anyway. (I meant to do it before we left but never got around to it).

Look how much Sam changed between her 4 month and 6 month appointments. I know how fast she is growing but this still amazed me.

14 Hours

Well, we finally made it to the Dominican Republic. Our adventure didn't end at the Wyndham in Miami though. We got on the plane the next day followed by a maintenance man! I thought KC might physically throw him off the plane. And just as we are settling in the 2 flight attendants start yelling at each other. And by yelling I don't mean bickering, I mean full use of the seven words you can't say on television. These are also words that should not be used on an airplane, with passengers. A flight attendant from the other cabin actually had to remind them that they are adults and should act like it. While entertaining I was worried it might screw up our flight even more if they had to get a new flight attendant. I considered offering to serve the drinks myself if we could just get off the ground.

I wish I could say this was the end of our travel adventures but I can't. There are alot of things that happened in between and I will post lots of pictures later. Sam had quite a few firsts in the Dominican.

Getting Home (this is where the 14 hours comes in)

We arrive at the Punta Cana airport the recommended 3 hours early and can immediately see why. The line to check is at least 100 people long. Priority check in and $10 allowed us to skip right to the front. (yep, we were those people). Apparently traveling with a baby in the Dominican (and $7) also gets you to the front of the security line. Now we were in the terminal with a mere 2.5 hours to spare, or so we thought...

After eating some questionable pizza and trying to choke down a Coca-cola Lite (NOT TO BE CONFUSED WITH DIET COKE) we settle into our gate. The Palsky's are called to board and we say our good-bye's convinced that we will shortly be on an air conditioned plane drinking a real diet coke. Hah! 2 hours and 15 minutes later we actually are getting on a plane. In that 2 hours I think I lost a small amount of my patience and sanity. We have now been at the airport for over 4 hours! Finally we are headed to Miami praying that 1.5 hours is enough time to make our connection.

We land in Miami and take off running. We need to go through customs, pick up our luggage, recheck it to Dallas, go through security again, and get to our gate. We make it to our gate with 30 minutes to spare. That's 30 minutes based on our original departure time. Our flight is running a little behind based on some bad weather. We think no problem after all of this trouble what's 20 minutes? We get a few drinks and think we'll eat something on the plane. All of the sudden it's lightening and the announcement comes on that the Miami airport is shut down until the weather passes. WHAT???? You have got to be kidding me! Do you people see us over here? We're the ones with a baby that has been a real trooper but we can only push it so far. We feed Sam. We walk Sam. We play with Sam. We rock Sam. Any patience or sanity I had left at this point is gone. And to top things off - it's hot in our terminal. It's Miami, turn the A/C up people! We did make it to Dallas that night so you would think that our adventure was over, but somehow it still gets "better".

After finally landing at DFW about 1am we hightail it to the baggage claim. My sweet Dad is there to pick us up. As the luggage starts to come off it hits us. We left the car seat between customs and the recheck of our baggage in Miami. If you happened to be at terminal D at DFW in the middle of the night on Saturday I was the lady holding a baby and bawling at baggage claim D29. We are now finally home but have no way to get there without pulling a Brittany.

We run to Wal-mart and pick up the first car seat we see. And then finally about 2am we hit our front door.

Door to door: 14 hours. I can honestly say I have never been so happy to be home.

Sam Goes International...Or Not...

This has been a long day. The last few days have been crazy as we prepared for a week in the Dominican Republic for Kirk and Devon's wedding. Lots of packing and laundry, and more packing, and last minute shopping, and more packing.
This morning we got up at 4am ready to hit the road. Left plenty of time for check-in. We even grabbed a little breakfast before boarding. Only to sit and sit and sit. Two hours after getting on the plane we left Dallas. Other than the fact that we are pretty darn lucky Sam didn't lose her mind this meant a missed connection in Miami and a total of4.5 hours on that plane. We figured a few hours to kill at the worst. We never imagined I would be writing this from the lobby of the Wyndham Miami Airport. All for a missing clamp on a cargo net.
I would say this Sam's first travel delay but I am thinking our daughter may be bad travel luck. We were also delayed the first time we flew with her in April. A missing clamp or the curse of Sam?
All of the packing that I mentioned above meant that we have way too many pieces of luggage and they are all HEAVY. KC was worried about it but I convinced him that it wouldn't matter because we wouldn't really be carrying it anywhere, um, whoops. I didn't anticipate the trips through the Miami airport finding a hotel shuttle and then the trip to the hotel shuttle. I think Sam gets her patience from her dad.
So now we are keeping our fingers crossed that tomorrow our flight leaves without a hitch.
I'll keep you updated...

In Celebration of Mom-Mom

Yesterday Sam, Auntie Kara, and I walked in the Susan G. Komen Race For A Cure in Plano, TX. We walked in celebration of my mom who is celebrating 6 years cancer free! We did the 5K and about 1 and a half miles in Sam decided that she would be much happier and see everything better if we were holding her. She was charming people left and right with her smiles and got her picture taken quite a few times. Thankfully it wasn't too sunny, just warm and breezy. Of course I brought my camera and the battery was dead so we had to take pictures with my phone.

Sam - Ready to get this party started!

Thank you Grandma for the awesome pink ribbon bandannas

Sam and I pre-walk

Sam and Auntie Kara

Yea! We made it!

Sam and I post-walk

I have to say thank you to everyone who helped me and Sam make our fundraising goal. You guys rock! All together the Plano walk raised almost $300K.

Eric

Mom & Hank

Erin & Kyle

Kirk & Devon

George & Di

We are hoping to walk in the 3 Day next year with Mom-mom and Auntie Ande. We are considering the 3.1 miles today a small warm up for the 60 miles (!) next year. There were so many people with 3 Day shirts and Survivor/In Celebration/In Memory shirts on that it was a real inspiration. Hopefully if we walk in enough of these when Sam is older she won't have to.

We love you Mom-Mom and wish you could have been in Dallas to walk with us! Maybe next year!

16 pounds 7 ounces

If this was Jeopardy there would be 2 correct questions/answers.

1.) How much does 66 sticks of butter weigh?

2.) How much did Sam weigh at her 6 month check up?

We weighed in at 16 lbs. 7 oz. and are 26 inches tall. All of our measurements fall into the 50-75% percentile. We already knew she was perfect this just confirmed it.

This picture was pre-shots but even post-shots we held up pretty well. We even managed to squeeze a Target run in after the Doctor visit and she was as charming as ever.

Does anyone know if they sell the paper that they put on the tables to normal people (as in non doctor people)? It occupied her for the full 20 minutes between the initial check up and the doctor. We couldn't get enough of it. Thankfully the doctor didn't seem to mind.

This is the "Uh, yeah I made this mess. What are you going to do about it?" face. It's the Philly girl inside coming out.

Checking to see if that second tooth showed up yet.

Thank god we went to the doctor yesterday. She gave us lots of good tips to survive teething. We took some Motrin (by we I mean Sam, not us) before bed last night and slept like a log. Other than KC knocking me in the head in the middle of the night it was a very restful sleep.

Chewning Look-alike Meter

MyHeritage: Look-alike Meter - Family websites - Descendants

Ok, so this look-a-like meter is contagious. (Thanks Christina, some people are trying to work here and would appreciate if you would stop posting such fun and interesting things...)

I had to know. Based on 99.9% of reactions since the day Sam arrived she is KC's double. I have to admit, I can see it. Admitting it doesn't make me wish just a little bit that she looked like me. This website gives me a little hope that someday someone will take a look at her and say those magic words of "Wow, you can totally tell that she is yours."

And by the way - I know that I used a picture of me in my skinny, prebaby days. It's my Look-alike meter and my blog so I can do what I want! Here is where you picture me maturely sticking my tongue out at you.

Chompers

I didn't really believe. Everyone kept telling me that she was teething. And while I agree that she chewed on everything in sight I thought isn't that what babies do??? We have been chewing on things for what seems like forever with no teeth in sight.

A tooth arrived. Not a full fledged tooth but the tip of one popping through the skin. Apparently this tooth arrived between the hours of 11pm and 5am last night. We have somehow avoided getting too sick (thank you nursing) and a real boo-boo so this was our first venture into baby pain. It sucks and it is a place I never, ever want to go again. It is possibly the worst feeling in the whole world looking at that sweet little face and not being able to fix it. Having 2 grown ups without sleep and a baby in pain made for a lovely family gathering in our bed from 2am to 7am. Yes, I know that we made all kinds of promises to ourselves about Peanut sleeping in her bed and not in ours but cutting a tooth throws any rule right out the window. And our resolve was strong for the first three hours but with no signs of relief our bed looked like a good place to weather the storm. Honestly, Sam could have asked for pretty much anything she wanted last night and we would have agreed - car of her own, semester abroad, designer purse collection, this was her chance. Since she can't talk and we seem to be doing much better this morning her window of opportunity is now closed.

We go for our 6 month check up this afternoon and get to see how much we have grown in the last 2 months. At our last appointment we weighed 13 lbs. 15 oz. and were 24.5" long. Any guesses?

As soon as I can I will post a picture of her smile. You may or may not be able to see any teeth but I promise the beginning of a chomper is in there.

Miss Independent

Sam is already showing an independent/stubborn streak. Her soothie is the best example of this. Even when she was an itty bitty thing she wasn't a soothie addict. She liked it and it would calm her down when she was losing it but we didn't have a 24 hour dependence on it. I think it is hereditary, neither KC or I were pacifier kids. Now she won't take it from KC or I AT ALL! I like for her to take it first thing in the morning because it seems to relax her right after she wakes up (and it will usually send her right back to sleep - at 5am I will take anything). She will only take it if she puts it in her mouth. I have to put it in her hand and she will get it to her mouth. If I ever figure how to put videos up I will post one of this event. It is hysterical because as she is doing it she talks to herself. I like to think "ahhh, bahhhh, ahhh" are words of encouragement in baby talk.
We have no idea where she got this stubborn independent streak from but we think it's a sign that we are in for trouble down the road.