Pittsford Trip

In early August, we headed off on our first really big road trip to Rochester. If you’re thinking to yourself, “Wow, driving 10.5 hours with a 12 month old! That does not sound fun!”.. well, you would be absolutely correct. Bo was quite a trooper – on the way up, he made it 7 hours before losing his mind and truthfully at that point, I felt like crying and flailing about too. On the way home, he was on to what this long car trip was all about and was basically miserable the whole way, even with me sitting in the back entertaining him. He slept approximately 60 out of 600 minutes, both times. Neato. Despite all that, I will say I preferred this to flying because at least his crying was self-contained to our vehicle and we could stop whenever we wanted for some fresh air, caffeinated beverages or just sitting at a rest stop and watching big trucks go by for a happy break. Either way, we made it. Another mama merit badge earned.

The big draw for our trip home was that the PGA Championships were being played at the golf club my parents belong to and Matt’s a big golf fan. I went to the practice rounds and that was enough for me to get a taste of it, and the rest of the week Matt attended with my brother-in-law or Dad and he was a happy camper. I spent the week letting Bo act as a Babyproofing Consultant on my mom’s house and visiting with old friends. There were a number of people who had returned to our town for the PGA so it was a great opportunity to catch up with people I hadn’t seen in years, especially since I rarely spend the holidays in NY anymore.

One of the highlights of my trip was getting together with 3 of childhood friends for a playdate with their children. My friend Jenn hosted, who has been one of my best friends since we were 13. My mom came along, since she’s good friends with Jenn’s mom, and we were laughing to ourselves as we walked up their front path about how many times I had been to Jenn’s house for things like prom pictures, New Years Eve sleepovers, even a dinner party for our high school Spanish club… and now we were here for a kiddo playdate. The other two girls, Kristen and Laura, I have known since elementary school and their little boys, Ryan and Nate, are 1 month and 2 months older than Bo respectively. It was so, so fun.

I also got to spend some time catching up with friends from the neighborhood I grew up (that none of us actually live in anymore.) It was totally a picturesque 80s suburb neighborhood where we played capture the flag and rode our bikes all over until it was time to go home for dinner. (Our moms are all best buds to this day and refer to themselves as “the hood ladies.” I love it.) A couple years ago, I reconnected with some of the “hood kids” over Twitter. I had a fun night catching up with them in real life at a cookout – and finally got to meet the wife of one of my childhood buddies, who I’ve talked to on Twitter for the last two years! We actually got together for a walk earlier in the day, and it felt strange to say “nice to meet you” because it really was just like seeing an old friend. This is why I love the Twitters.

We also celebrated our 6th wedding anniversary while we were at home! Hard to believe 6 years have flown by already. We opted not to go out because of the PGA crowds, and had a yummy dinner at home with the family and shared a bottle of our favorite champs.

It was a fun trip home, even with the travel drama, and I’m happy we had both the opportunity to spend some time with my family (and for Matt to spend some time with his favorite golfers) as well as get to see far-flung friends I miss. I absolutely love our life in NC, but going home to Pittsford in the summer time and seeing childhood friends sure makes me nostalgic for my roots and wishing the road to get there wasn’t quite as long as it is.

Asheville

On our way down the mountain, all of us just kept saying “why haven’t we come here more often??” I’ve always heard great things about Asheville and we actually did come up once to run a race but didn’t really visit the city much. We and Zac + Jamie had an opportunity for some grandparent babysitting the same weekend, so we were just looking for a nearby weekend getaway and settled on Asheville. We all loved it! Jamie has been a few times to visit a good friend who lives there, so we had a little more guidance than when Matt + I had come before and now we could easily make a few more weekend trips to keep working through the list of recommendations of places to eat and things to do.

We had really, really yummy beer at Wicked Weed Brewing Co. We had some seriously delicious meals: Salsa’s on Friday night (awesome blueberry mojito), Tupelo Honey for Saturday brunch and Nine Mile for Saturday dinner. Tupelo Honey is one of those places that everyone tells you to go and you think it’s going to be totally overrated, and then you get there and there’s fifteen things on the menu you want and your meal is every bit as good as was promised and you sort of consider coming back again the next day. (In other words, I recommend it.) Saturday night we saw a cover band at the famous Orange Peel. The same band covered Poison, Motley Crue and Guns’n’Roses and they not only covered the songs, they were completely in character for each band. It was fun and sort of funny, but it also turns out that we are approximately one decade too young for these bands and actually only knew one or two major hits by them.

The highlight of the trip was our zip lining experience with Navitat. I’m not exactly a thrill-seeker… in fact, you could probably call me a safety-seeker. I didn’t know what I was getting myself into and I decided not to do too much research ahead of time so I wouldn’t psyche myself out. On Friday night, we were having drinks at this rooftop bar called Skybar and Matt said “well, we’ll be about three times as high as this” and I almost lost my cookies right then and there. But, it turned out to be way less scary than I thought and way, way more awesome than I thought. Our tour guides were great and I felt super safe the whole time, and it was totally exhilarating to step off a plate form and literally zip from one tree to the next for four hours.

There was one zip that went over this really deep valley and all of a sudden the treeline below just dropped off, and I happened to look down just then. It was this half second of utter terror when I realized it was just me and a really heavy duty cable hanging out over all these trees and I literally thought to myself “what am I DOING, I am a mother! This is ridiculous.” And then that thought passed as quickly as it came when I then realized I was probably more secure in the triple-locked zip harness than I am in my car most days. It was overall really fun and I was giving myself internal high fives the rest of the day for not chickening out when Matt had first brought it up and just making myself zip outside my comfort zone.

We had a blast and it was a great getaway with our travel buddies, the 4-C’s. I know Matt + I are both so thankful that we’ve had such great help with Bo this year, and that we’ve been able to do these kind of trips. I always feel reluctant to go at first and miss Bo terribly, but I come back a more refreshed and recharged mama, and it’s a nice reminder that we’re still Matt + Meghan and not just Momma + Daddy. (Thanks Mom for babysitting again!)

Topsail

To celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary, my parents rented a house at Topsail Island.

Then they went ahead and ruined their perfect relaxing getaway by inviting all their kids.

Throughout the two weeks, there was my parents, Matt and I, Bo, my sister and her husband, my sister’s friend, my brother, and my in-laws. And Buddy. Never all at the same time, but basically there were a lot of people on this beach trip. Fortunately it was great weather (making up for our April trip) and we were able to spend most days out on the beach, getting sand in our piggie toes or logging in a few miles on the golf course. There were a few days of really heavy, crazy rain storms but they provided a respite from the sun and a chance to curl up in the window seat and catch up on a trashy US Weekly (left behind by former tenants, possibly from 2-3 years ago, don’t even know, read them anyways) with a glass of wine while my baby scooted around on the floor dumping every single toy out and his 4 grandparents sit around applauding his every move. That’s my kind of vacation, ya’ll.

We’ve been pretty loyal to Surfside Beach, SC and Garden City Beach, SC for years. My mom has been going since she was a teenager, then my parents as soon as they started dating, and our family has only missed one year. SC beaches have a special place in my nostalgic little heart, but I have to say we loved our first Topsail experience. (Less traffic, less commercialization and you don’t have to drive down a road full of mini golf and firework stores to get there.)  I would say this was Bo’s first official beach trip (since we didn’t get out much in April) but he was smitten. He loved every day sitting on the towel, scooping up sand, smacking together seashells and sitting at the water’s edge with water lapping up on him. One day we were sitting down at the water’s edge and I brought him back up to my mom on the towel and ran down to the water to wash myself off. I returned back to a hollering child…. the message was loud and clear: “Don’t go back in the water without taking me with you, momma!!” I’m a beach bum through and through, so I’m happy to see my little guy is just as thrilled with sand, sun and SPF 70.

And now the photo dump…

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.

The Beach

Another year, another Claffey family beach trip! There were, however, quite a few changes from last year. For starters, instead of showing off a small baby belly, I was showing off a (not so small) baby. Easter was also much earlier this year, and the weather gods were not so kind to us. We had one day we were able to sit on the beach, but the rest were a little chilly and windy. We had a smaller crew than usual this year. In the past, we've had as many as 19 family members on one trip. For most of this week, it was just my parents, my sister and Bo and I. My 2 aunts and their daughters were there for the weekend but their spring breaks didn't coincide, and they headed back on Monday.

We were indoors most of the week but it still felt like a vacation. With lots of extra eyes and hands around for Bo, I took advantage by sleeping in, taking a few naps and tackling a huge project: organizing a mere decade's worth of digital photos on my external hard drive. You know, one of those projects that always gets pushed aside for the tasks of daily living… or never gets tackled because it is just too darn overwhelming. (I managed to get through 2003-2011… now the trick is making myself finish the last 1.5 years back home.)

It was a quiet and relaxing week, a nice little escape from the day to day. I ended up heading back a day early due to near-hurricane like conditions on the forecast and a Daddy who was missing his little boy. Our drive home was an eventful cap to a low key week (pouring rain! crying baby! barking dog!) but we made it safe and sound and it didn't counteract the relaxing effects of the week too much.