Travelling with Baby

Family Trip to Portland with little Mimi ;-)

Mimi and Grandma at Widmer Brewery in Portland, where my brother works.

Us at Cannon Beach
Mimi and Daddy at the park one morning

So it's been awhile since I have made a blog post. Life is crazy. I don't know what I was thinking going to school, teaching, working on my dissertation and staying home with little Mimi. When this semester ends I think I might go into a coma!

So in the craziness of our life, we took a long weekend trip to Portland Oregon. My brother has lived there for 2 years and was graduating from culinary school. I was a little worried how Mimi would do on the trip. She is just over 3 months now. She caught a cold (from me :-() about a day or two before we left. I thought, great, the one time we actually go somewhere (and on a an airplane) and the poor kid gets her first cold. As soon as we saw her nose was runny we starting using the "little noses" non-medicated saline drops. I was surprised how well she did with us squirting this stuff up her noise every hour or two. We also elevated her crib mattress and put a vaporizer in her room. I use a vaporizer because we live in Florida and a cool mist humidifier does nothing because our air is already so humid.

I was also worried that with the change in time (we went from eastern to pacific) that her sleep would be all messed us. I also had this fear that as soon as we boarded the plane she would be screaming and everyone would hate us. But...to my surprise Mimi was a DREAM on the flights. I nursed her off and on and she sleep and never made a peep. People complimented us on how quiet she was.

While in Portland we did a ton of walking ans site seeing. The first day my brother took us out to Cannon Beach, which was AMAZING, that is where they filled the beach scenes from the Goonies (80's movie I loved as a kid). One of the days we were the our friend Michael and his girlfriend came up to meet us. He lived about 1 1/2 hours away. We shopped the markets, saw the river walk, ate a delicious restaurants, my brother cooked for us...just a great trip all around. The weather was misty and cool. This is exciting for us, as New Yorkers transplanted to Florida 6 years ago we were excited to wear jacketes and sweaters for a weekend. It was really fun to bundle Mimi up in hats and sweaters too. She was such a doll the whole trip. She just rode along in her snugli carrier and got spoiled with kisses from Grandma.

Mimi all bundled sleeping in her Snugli carrier

My brother seemed so happy there, it was great to see him. The only drawback to the trip is we go almost no rest. We were going going going from the night we got there. We stayed at a really nice hotel right on pioneer square. It was called The Nines, got a great deal with Expedia.

This is Mimi and Daddy chillin' in the hotel watching Star Trek

I think we may consider moving to Portland in a few years. Such a clean nice city. Very environmentally conscience people, great natural landscapes, great food.

I could go on more about Portland but Mimi is growing bored of her playmat. She last a solid 20-30 minutes on that thing though---I'm glad my friend Grace lent it to me because I would not have paid 60 bucks for one!The loaner play mat she loves

Advice for travelling with kids:
Travel Lite!
Be prepared for the worst (explosive poops on airplane, extra clothes, etc)
Be Flexibe

Hope everyone is well! Sorry for the crazy random sentence structure post--gotta run.
Jen