I arrived in Virginia early on Thursday morning, and I spent the rest of the day trying to recuperate. Then on Friday my mother and I drove up to Pennsylvania to see her family. They all were so excited to meet Gracie! She was a huge hit! My cousin CA from Kyrgyzstan kept threatening to stow Grace away in her luggage. My other cousin A kept fighting CA for Grace, so I never had to hold her or feed her. All I had to do was change diapers!!
Both of my uncles' wives were completely taken with Grace and loved to talk to her and cuddle her. My grandma adored holding her, and my grandfather even cooed at her. It was amazing for me to see my grandpa, who I'd always thought of as kind of gruff, soften so much around the baby. He let her completely untie his shoelaces as he kept re-tying them.
Everyone was impressed with how good a baby she is. She even did well in church this morning. She made some cooing noises during the sermon, but generally she was either chewing on the pew in front of us or ripping up my announcements or gumming the visitor tags. She even tried to eat the handheld fan (my grandparents' church doesn't have air conditioning), but I decided that was where I was going to draw the line.
The only thing that slightly marred the weekend is Gracie came down with a cold. Last night she woke up at 10:15pm and couldn't breathe through her nose. She got really fussy because of it; she couldn't breathe and suck on her pacifier. I had my concerns about this because I needed a nose aspirator to suck out the mucus, but my grandparents live in a tiny mountain town. I didn't think anything was going to be open that late and I envisioned being up all night with her. However, my grandfather found a 24-hour grocery store that not only had a nose aspirator, but some wide-mouthed no-drip nipples! I already have the small ones that fit the narrow bottles, and I LOVE them, but I hadn't ever seen the wide-mouth versions. They would fit an Avent bottle. I HAD to buy some of those!! Once we got home, I sucked out Grace's nose and rubbed her chest with Vicks baby rub, and she went right to sleep. She slept most of the day today as we drove back to northern Virginia, so I think she'll be fine pretty quickly. She's pretty healthy.
Well, it's almost midnight and my dad is having a friend over at 9am tomorrow. I think I ought to be dressed and ready for the day before he shows up!! :o)