Forest's First Trip to Louisiana

Sorry that I have been kind of sparse in my blog postings lately. We just returned home from a 10 day trip to Louisiana; Forest’s first visit to his parents’ native state. 

Jon and I ourselves hadn’t been back in 14 months so it was a long overdue journey. I will write a separate post later in the week about the actual plane travel to and from New Orleans because I’ve had lots of questions regarding that. Today I will just focus on some of the highlights from the trip. 

We arrived to New Orleans at about 4 PM on a Friday afternoon and after collecting our bags and rental car, we drove 45 minutes north to my parents’ house in Covington. Both Jon and I’s parents along with my sister and her two youngest babies were waiting there for us. 

My brother and his girlfriend, Alexis, joined us later in the evening. 

By the time we got situated and visited with family, it was already time for little Andrew (my sis’s youngest- 8.5 months old) to hit the hay, but we still let Forest go swimming with his older cousin, Lucas (almost 5!). 

Of course Forest loved the pool, especially the waterfall and the jets that sprayed water in his face. 

He is one of the only babies I have ever heard of that actually loves water getting splashed into his face. He couldn’t get enough! 

The next morning was time for more swimming with baby cousin Andrew and Nana and Pops. 

I took this free baby-sitting opportunity to run some errands and came home to find Pops on the tractors with both babies.

The cuteness is a bit much. I call them ‘twin’ cousins since they are exactly 4 weeks apart. 

That afternoon, Jonathan and I were attending a baby shower in Baton Rouge for Forest's baby cousin due in September and we decided to leave a bit early so that 1) we could time the drive with Forest’s nap and 2) we could take him by the LSU campus for some photo ops. 

My bestie from college, April, met us at Mike’s habitat so that she could meet Forest and take part in his LSU brain-washing initiation. But y’all, it was HOT! So hot that Mike wasn’t even out and even the bronze statue of Mike was way too hot to sit Forest on top of him for a picture.   

We quickly snapped the necessary pictures and then headed to the LSU bookstore for some iced coffee and air conditioning before heading to the baby shower. 

LSU is #1

Forest loves Aunt April because she is very pretty and also feeds him chocolate chip cookies.

At the baby shower, Forest met his Uncle Justin and Uncle Bryan for the first time, along with several family friends. I was glad we could be there to celebrate the upcoming arrival of our niece Rayne!

Forest has entered his Stranger Anxiety full force and when we got to the baby shower it was a bit too overwhelming for him. He promptly had a meltdown and needed quite a lot of soothing to make it through. Poor guy had been through quite the journey and was super thrown off by the schedule and environmental change. 

With a little help from his pacifier and his lambie he managed to make it until dinner time and then we had to head back to Covington where I had the unfortunate task of keeping him awake until we got home. He was NOT happy and cried vigorously for the second half of the drive. 

My family was disappointed that we had to whisk him straight to bed once we got home, especially since my sister and her boys were leaving first thing in the morning to go back home. However, he needed rest and ended up sleeping 13 hours straight, a record for him! We actually had to wake him the next morning because we wanted some pics of the cousins in their matching M&M outfits before they headed back to Florida. 

Lucas and Andrew. Big brother Corbin was home sick in Florida:(

Those are some seriously cute M&Ms!!

You can tell Lucas has had practice being an awesome big brother!

We sure did miss our yellow M&M (Corbin)!

Later that morning we had more family from both sides show up at my parents for brunch. 

Forest did some more napping and swimming. He was both playing and sleeping hard, that’s for sure!   

My cousin Gracie has a water proof case for her iPhone so she snapped this action shot for me:)

He sure does love pretty girls:)

Once the afternoon came, my brother and Alexis headed home, as did the rest of the family, including Jonathan who had business in Houston. It went from being really boisterous and lively to quiet and nearly empty. I was really emotional about saying goodbye to my siblings. 

After living so far away and having a baby, I know how rare it is to be able to meet up and I felt like our time together was much too short and hectic. Can you believe we didn't even get a picture of the 3 of us!?!?!?

But it was also nice to have a few quiet days with just my parents and Forest. We passed the time shopping, swimming, watching Big Brother and playing mahjong. 

This was actually my first time ever to be without Jonathan overnight since becoming a mom (besides in the hospital). I was quite anxious the first night he was gone and could not sleep at all. By 1 AM I finally decided to take a sleeping pill but had the hardest time waking up at 7 to take care of Forest. Luckily my mom filled in and I got to take a 2 hour nap while she fed and entertained Forest. It really made me wish I lived closer to family for those hard days! (Luckily those hard days are getting fewer and farther between so for now living in California is still pretty amazing, but still, sometimes a momma just needs a Nana to pinch hit for a few innings, ya know?)

Jonathan returned to Louisiana on Thursday. He sure did miss his little man. His parents came to stay the weekend at my parent’s house so that they could soak up some time with their only grandbaby. As of September, he won’t be their only grandbaby anymore so he had to take his opportunity to hog the spotlight while he still can. 

We enjoyed a relaxing weekend that mostly consisted of hanging out in the backyard, going out for sno-cones and ice cream and, you guessed it--- MORE SWIMMING! 

On Saturday night, April drove in from B.R. so that we could spend some more time together and I could meet her beau.

Can you find Forest?

We had a great time staying at my parents’ house and my mom went above and beyond to ensure that we were comfortable and had everything we needed to take care of baby boy. 

Since my sister and I both have babies, she even set up a full nursery upstairs with similar furniture and bedding to what Forest has at home and she even got a glider for us to rock him in before sleeps. 

He slept better there than he does at home!  Thanks mom and dad (Nana and Pops) for making a long trip as easy as possible. 

Anyhoo, that’s basically a super quick run down of the trip. I’ll post more about the plane ride and some more sentimental stuff over the next few days. Stay tuned!