Silas Jones: Frequent Flyer

It's been a busy summer. Rather than being content to sit at home in Arlington, Silas has been a frequent traveler, making two recent trips to the beach and twice hosting grandparents. Here's the rundown:

In late July, Mimi came to visit for three days. The first night, she and Scott babysat so that Matt and Taylor could enjoy a night at the ballpark. Mimi was also here to observe our visit from the knowledgeable folks at Safe Start Baby, who did a thorough babyproofing assessment of our home and provided an exhaustive report (for a remarkably reasonable price) that explained every way in which our home is entirely inhospitable to a child. Apparently, nearly every item in our home poses a choking, suffocation, drowning, tipping, crushing, or poisoning hazard. Not surprisingly, Safe Start is more than happy to provide and install a vast number of babyproofing products for the bargain basement price of eleventy bajillion dollars. Matt is not handling this well. To help respond to this enormous range of dangers, Mimi helped Matt do some shopping for replacement furniture.

Snuggling with my Mimi

She gives good hugs

Following Mimi's visit, we left for vacation at San Destin, Florida with Papa (Matt's dad), Nana Donna (Matt's stepmom), Uncle Russ and Aunt Morgan, Uncle Jeremy and Aunt Lauren, Uncle Brian, Aunt Angela, and cousins Anthony/A.J. and Kahlen. To get there, Silas took his first plane ride, and like any good traveler, he spent a lot of time flirting with the stewardesses and demanding more drinks.

Seriously--he did a great job. We were prepared for it to be awful--we had bags (note the PLURAL) with new toys, juice (he's never had juice before, and, let me tell you, IT. ROCKED. HIS. WORLD), iPhone applications for babies, extra pacis, teething tablets, teething gel, teething rings, a faux blackberry, a faux remote, and many books, but all he wanted to do was bang the free plastic cups on the tray table and play peekaboo with the flight attendants. We even received a number of compliments on how well he behaved (as if we even had anything to do with it).

Why were you guys so worried? I'm cool.

Excuse me, miss? My drink could use a little topping off, please.

Once we arrived in Destin, we grabbed our rental and Silas's Uncle Russ and Aunt Morgan who were also on our plane and we all headed to ... the outlet mall right near the resort where we were staying. Silas was again a trooper and put up with a solid 2 hours of shopping before we headed back to the resort to meet up with all the rest of the family.

Thank God. My entourage has arrived.

Silas LOVED LOVED LOVED meeting his cousins Anthony a.k.a. AJ (Matt's stepsister Angela's son) and Kahlen (Matt's stepbrother Jeremy's daughter). Cousin Anthony was very protective and helpful -- he read Silas books and helped him play with toys, in addition to providing some seriously good snuggles. Cousin Kahlen showed Silas how much fun it is to play in the pool and also introduced Silas to the awesomeness that is old school Bugs Bunny cartoons.

Don't worry Silas, AJ is watching over your paci

Watching Cousin Kahlen play in the grass

They're cousins. Identical cousins and you'll find....

Papa providing AJ with a tutorial on holding baby Silas

Silas also loved spending time with his Papa and Nana Donna. Nana Donna even babysat one day while Taylor and Aunt Morgan went for pedicures and Matt, Uncle Russ, and Papa played golf. It was heaven! In addition to having some good quality time with his cousins and grandparents, Silas also finally got to meet his Aunt Angela, Uncles Brian ("Robots don't feel pain, Jerry") and Jeremy, and Aunt Lauren. In addition, Uncle Russ and Aunt Morgan were also there doting on the Buddy. Let's just say that the boy was NOT starved for snuggles and love while we were there.