The Long Journey ...

Our long journey actually began the night before when we found a sizeable scorpion in the house. In case you're not familiar with desert critters: scorpions are bad news and since we have Christian, we are very concerned about scorpions. In extreme cases, a scorpion sting can kill a child. Jonathan tried to kill it, but it just made its way down the sink drain. Jonathan ran a lot of water, I poured a lot of bleach. So I hope its either dead (sorry, PETA) or on its way to the sewage system.

We have since learned scorpions travel in pairs (and often with babies). So ... I guess there is one more in the house somewhere. We put out "sticky pads" in some key areas with the hopes that the other scorpion might get caught in our absence.

The travel morning started with a visit to Christian's new doctor, Dr. Diaz who is an absolutely wonderful, kind and compassionate man. I'm going to have to devote an entire blog post to telling you about Dr. Diaz (some day).

Christian and I were upstairs getting ready (okay, he was playing, I was getting ready) and Jonathan was downstairs loading the car up. I heard Jonathan say, "Hi, Christian!" ... and i was confused when I saw the baby gate was still up, but the voice came from downstairs. Turns out we've got a little escape artist on our hands ... Christian managed to get through the gap between the gate and the stair railing. I have no idea how he did that, but it appears we need to come up with a new solution for keeping him from going downstairs. I am just thankful he didn't fall down. He's actually very good at getting up and down the stairs on his own ... but it only takes one moment of distraction for him to loose his footing ... and down he goes (as I witnessed back in February). So knowing he bypassed the gate and got downstairs without my knowledge really got my heart racing!

Our drive started close to 11:00am (much too late) and we assumed since that was Christian's usual nap time, he'd take a nap. The nap lasted an hour or so ... and didn't resume until we got close to Albuquerque. So, he was pretty cranky for some of the drive. And since he's not walking, we couldn't put him down on the floor when we stopped and got out (the picture to the right is a stop outside Grants, NM). So, he was either in the car seat, in our arms, or in a high chair for the entire day. And that is no fun for a kiddo who is used to being able to crawl all over the place and explore the world.

Christian's spirits picked back up when we arrived in Bosque Farms (just outside ABQ) to stay with our friends, Jon and Valerie. And he was too excited to go to sleep. I think we got him down at around 10:30pm. And sure enough ... he was awake at his usual time this morning (5:00am Arizona time).

It was a rough day for our lil' guy ... and consequently a rough day for us all.

It could have been worse, of course ... but I have informed Jonathan that next time we must go to Albuquerque, it will be on a plane.