Vacationing with Phoebe

Following our lovely visit from Matt and Erin over the July 4th holiday, Jess returned to full-time work for the first time after Phoebe was born. I’ve been spending the last two weeks at home with Phoebe, and we have successive grandparent visits the next two weeks in order to avoid daycare until Phoebe’s 4-month anniversary. I’ve enjoyed the time with Phoebe, but it’s also been one of the most stressful “vacations” I’ve ever had. Currently Phoebe isn’t eating from a bottle reliably. Some days I can get her to eat an entire bottle and then some, but other days, she refuses the bottle all together. Add to that the realization that we were due for a new car, and you will get some idea of what I was dealing with.

I spent most of the first week looking at various car adds in an attempt to weed through the huge number of options. We had some idea of what we wanted, and had been leaning heavily towards a Subaru Outback for some time, but with daycare costs on the immediate horizon, we wanted to keep the costs down somewhat. Since the Outback is pretty much the quintessential Colorado car, it does command a premium that it wouldn’t fetch in the other 49 states. Ultimately, we didn’t want a big SUV or something that would cost significantly more to drive than Taco, our formerly-faithful old Dodge Neon. In the end, we found what we hope turns out to be a good deal on a fairly-new Subaru Legacy sedan from 2008. It’s silver and has a few features we really like. It doesn’t offer any more ground clearance than the Neon did, but then again, that never stopped us from flying across Colorado’s sometimes badly worn dirt roads. Besides, we’re not likely to be seriously upping our back-country adventures in the next few years either, and a regular old car will get us to most of the trailheads in the state without any problem. A big thanks to all of our friends and family for putting up with us over the last few weeks (or months). We should be both more reliable and fun now (okay, maybe just reliable).

Having wrapped up the car purchase on Monday with a marathon session of haggling where neither I nor the car salseman’s boss-apparent were willing to budge on pricing, Phoebe and I had the rest of the week to enjoy ourselves and our newly restored ability to travel about the area with ease and air conditioning. I mention the air conditioning because we hadn’t run the air conditioning regularly in the Neon for several years. Hey, the car was old.

On Tuesday, Phoebe and I went into Boulder to watch some of the day’s Tour de France stage with our friend Elijah. After the stage wrapped up, we drove down near Elijah’s place and I pulled out the Chariot so that we could enjoy a walk along the Boulder Creek path. We walked all the way from Settler’s Park to Jess’s office at 30th street. Since Phoebe was again being stubborn about the bottle, we made a lunch date for her with the breast. After a bit, we made the walk back to the car and then Phoebe and I headed back home. After work, we headed up to Fort Collins for our monthly grotto meeting. There was some sad discussion about the encroaching White Nose Syndrome threatening bats across the country. Sadly, it’s also threatening cave access in Colorado.

Wednesday we spent around Lafayette. Phoebe finally ate en entire bottle at a single sitting, but it seemed more like a fluke than a permanent change. By the end of the afternoon we were glad to see Jess come home. That night our friends Katie, Todd, and Henry came over for some dinner. They’re moving to Minnesota in a few weeks; we’re really gonna miss them, but I guess that gives us another place to travel to in the future–especially if we need to get our mosquito fix.

Thursday brought a lot of new fun for us. We stopped by church to look into some issues with the printer, grabbed a coffee at Cafe Sole, stopped by Jess’s office for lunch, and headed up to Estes Park to do a little hike in Rocky Mountain National Park. We try to avoid Estes on summer weekends, but the midweek traffic isn’t much better either. Despite some criminally slow drivers, it only took us around 45 minutes to get to Estes Park from Boulder, but something like an extra half hour to get into the national park. Phoebe and I speed hiked up to one of the lakes near Bear Lake and stopped for a little snack along a shady shore that was relatively lonely. Phoebe seemed to really like looking at the lake and the lily pads floating about on the lightly rippled water, but she wasn’t at all interested in snacking. I managed to get a few pictures before we packed up and hiked back down to the car. Phoebe was hot and tired. She passed out just a few minutes into the car trip and slept all the way home.

Friday, we spent most of the morning around the house. I had a number of songs to put into Finale(R) and transpose in time for a rehearsal on Saturday and some church services on Sunday. Luckily Phoebe was pretty cooperative, so I was able to get them all transposed. It takes a little longer to put the music into the computer than it would to do the transposition by hand, but it makes for much nicer looking music which also translates into easier sight reading. Since we occasionally change the keys of music at church it also makes subsequent changes a breeze. Later that afternoon, I finished some much-needed cleaning around the house and saddled up Phoebe for her first bike ride with the Chariot. Technically she’s still too small to use it as a bike carrier, but we spotted some other parents using the “infant” sling Jess got me for Father’s Day for this unsanctioned activity, so clearly that means it’s a safe practice, right? We just rode around the neighborhood for a bit and met up with Jess at Cannon Mine for a picnic dinner and desert. After riding back home, I left Jess and Phoebe and headed off to the airport to pick up Chris and Betti for their visit. In a way, it’ll be nice to get back to work on Monday, but it will also be sad to stop spending as much time with Phoebe. Of course, it’s also sad to see such a long “vacation” come to an end.