Here's Olive at the beach a few weeks ago with her highly fashionable pigtails. Very adorable. We had a great time at the Beach (Rehoboth) and in NY (Adirondacks) with my family. Marc had to come back to work, so he wasn't around for the New York part of the journey. We both missed him very much. What was the most important lesson I learned? ALWAYS TRAVEL WITH CANDY. Always. It prevents child abuse. Olive did fine on the plane rides up to NY, but not so much on the way home. She was already on my nerves when we got to the Philadelphia airport because she was being really whiny. The flight from Philly to Baltimore was only about 25 minutes long, but we had to wait about 45 minutes at the airport, in which time Olive whined continuously. At one point she whipped up my shirt to my neck just for grins. But teh worst was when we got on the (very full, very crowded) plane and Olive had a full on, kicking screaming meltdown. To make the situation even better, she was screaming, "Mommy! Don't hit me Mommy! Stop it!" I was mortified. Finally, a woman in front of us turned around in her seat, and I was bracing myself for some sort of nasty comment. She whips out a lollipop, looks at Olive, and says, "If you stop crying, you can have this." Bam. Problem solved. Sticky, messy, filthy child, but a reasonably quiet one at that. People were pretty understanding; I think they were also thanking their lucky stars that it was only a 25 minute flight.
I'm making it sound more horrible than it was. It really wasn't that bad, and we did have a wonderful time on vacation. I've always wanted Olive to be able to do someof the same things that I loved doing as a kid. We went to Otter Creek, where we used to go swimming inteh river with my cousins when we were little. The rocks are so slippery that you just let the water carry you down the rapids. Olive wasn't doing that, but she was wading around in the shallow water. We were on Brantingham Lake, and she got to go swimming and ride in the canoe with Grandma and Grandpa. My parents had a great time with her there, it was nice for them to be able to spend some time with her.
