Florida

It seems so long ago now, but we had a great time in Florida. Dave's favorite activity was to check the weather back home and we were both delighted that we missed out on a couple big snow storms and some bitterly cold temperatures. (One time when Dave checked we had -38 degree wind chills at home.) Martin also seemed to enjoy the warmer weather. He was giddy when he got outside to play for the first time. I appreciated the fact that we didn't have to spend 10 minutes getting snow pants and boots and hats and mittens on and could just put on shoes and walk out the door.
We stayed with our friends John and Amanda Moldstad, and got to meet their baby, John, who was born in October. I was very interested in how Martin would act around such a little baby. I was actually quite surprised to see how attached he got to him. In fact, Martin would get very concerned any time the baby cried and would try to get someone to go do something about it.

One of the other highlights of our trip was the day we went on a picnic to a nearby state park. It was great to eat food cooked on a grill.

The park had a spring fed lake which was the headwaters for some river whose name I have forgotten, so after lunch we went down to check it out. Martin saw the water and saw people in the water and insisted on getting in himself. So we took his socks and shoes off and let him wade around a little bit. The water was actually quite cold, so we didn't think he would last too long, but we were wrong.

It didn't take too long before Martin lost his balance and fell in. Fortunately, the big pouty lip only lasted a few seconds and before long he was splashing away and having the time of his life. Eventually we had to force him out of the water since his lips were turning blue and he was shivering from head to toe. If it were up to him we would probably have stayed all day.

I had been pretty nervous about flying with Martin, but as it turned out I really had nothing to worry about. He was fascinated with looking out the window and (on the way down) saying, "Bye snow!" over and over again. We had a layover in Memphis on the trip there and back, so we had a total of four flights. Martin definitely had things figured out by the time we were done. In fact, on the first of our two flights on the way home, Martin saw the stewardess coming up the aisle with the drink cart. He must have heard her ask someone if they wanted juice because he got really excited and started pointing to Dave and myself and then to the stewardess as if to tell us that we should ask her for some juice. (I allowed him one sippy cup of juice for each flight, and he had already finished his for that flight.) When the stewardess came we did have her fill Martin's cup with water, but you could see the disappointment in his face when he realized that he didn't get juice. He was so disappointed that he decided to take matters into his own hands, and the next time the stewardess walked past he practically jumped out of my lap trying to hand her his cup. Thankfully we were able to distract him from his lack of juice and the rest of the flight was fairly uneventful. On the final flight, Martin even fell asleep for awhile, so I got some cuddle time. It was a great way to cap off a great trip.