Rochester Playdates

Bo and I ended up making somewhat of a last minute trip home to Rochester. I received an invitation to one of my best friend’s baby showers back in Rochester and then ended up finding an amazing deal on Southwest. I had the flight before I even stopped to consider that I would be flying SOLO with my child. I’ll refrain from another “flying with a baby” post but it actually went a whole lot better than it did last time. He seems to be in that sweet spot of not being mobile yet but being highly entertained by things like iPhones and snacks. (I wouldn’t exactly say it was an ENJOYABLE experience, but it certainly was as terrible as the last one.)

I had four wonderful days at home while the husband held down the fort (read: dealt with Buddy) and I’m so glad I was able to be here and see my friend’s beautiful pregnant belly and spoil the mama-to-be. Krissy and I have been friends since we bonded over our love of oldies music in 7th grade when everyone else was listening to Pearl Jam and Nirvana. Kris was the only other person I knew who could sing every line of 59th Street Bridge song with me. (In case you can’t read the subtext here, we were indeed both big dorks. But we were happy, blissfully unaware of how dorky we were kind of dorks – a rare experience for a middle school girl, I know.) So! Anyways, when you start a relationship off with that kind of bond, it’s really pretty awesome to be still close nearly 20 years later and getting to share the experience of motherhood together. I can’t wait for her little boy to arrive in September!

While I was home, I also had two long anticipated play dates. My sister’s best friend from middle school, Christy, (note: they were in the cool clique and probably made fun of people like us back then) was pregnant the same time as I was and our due dates were just two days apart. Bo was in a hurry to get here and Maggie took her sweet time, so our little ones are actually almost a month apart but we’ve spent much of our pregnancy and first year of baby raising texting each other our “omg is this happening to you too??” moments. We’ve been waiting all year to get the babies together and Christy just happened to be in town for a family wedding that weekend. It was fate! We’ll call it their first date.

If that wasn’t fun enough, the next day Bo and I had a play date with another friend from way-back-when (first grade maybe?) who has a little boy just three weeks older than Bo. Last year when I was home for my baby shower, we had a bump date and this time we got to have an actual playdate! We decided they really like each other even though they mostly played near each other instead of with each other.

Other than that, I basically spent four days soaking up some time with my parents and getting spoiled by my mom’s willingness to wake up early with Bo. Such a fun trip home… and thankful the travel to and from wasn’t nearly as traumatic as I was worried it was going to be.