...a little wave: well...

if you've already read the daily bebe, you have some idea of how bebe's first roadtrip went. in a word, not so well.

it started out promising enough. we were taking her out west to mems and teed's place. we left around 5:30 pm friday night. there was a light rain but all was calm. it took us less time than usual to get through town and to the pike. this is where our good fortune ended. what should have taken two hours at most instead took about seventeen days. or at least that's how it felt to me, sitting in front of my baby who was crying her eyes out as we sat in traffic, and sitting beside my wife who was crying her eyes out because my daughter was crying her eyes out and there was no way to comfort her. traffic, you suck.

once we got moving, beatrix was quick to settle down, but it felt like we were trapped in the parental version of the movie speed. if we dropped below fifty miles per hour, our baby would explode. well, not so much explode as screech and wail and cry and gurgle and choke and writhe and... so yes, explode. on the one hand it was cute to learn that, like her daddy, bebe wants to go fast! on the other hand- screeching. wailing. frothing.

once we got up to speed and made it past the traffic vortex of western mass, also known as the rt. 84 exit, things calmed down considerably and we were able to nervously appreciate the crazy rain storm we found ourselves driving through. it poured on us, but beyond the hills in the distance were massive cloud breaks that ran parallell to the horizon. as the sun set through level after level of clouds, we were treated to what felt like a fallout shower from an a-bomb blast, minus the radiation sickness. i think.

the landscape went from orange to red to purple as we drove through the mist. any wet surface( i.e. everything) seemed to soak up the color and reflect it back at us. even the still moist tears on my wife's cheeks were little purple rivulets draining down to the corners of her mouth. i wish beebs had been a little older so that she could understand and appreciate my threats to stop crying. oh, and also the beautiful colors all around us.

the pictures don't do it justice...

the rest of the weekend is a blur. lb and i had been talking ahead of time about how great it would be to meet up with aunt marge and uncle ben, and mems and teed, and pass our child off to their eagerly awaiting clutches. ha ha ha. ha. what we were also counting on, and what was the one contigency upon which the entire weekend hung, was our ONE MONTH OLD daughter making the adjustment from empty, quiet, dark home with set feeding and sleeping schedule to what basically amounts to, from a baby's perspective, TOTAL CHAOS. there were constant loud voices, bright lights, a dog, corn pancakes, the olympics... you can see how she might feel overwhelmed. mommy and daddy were total assholes. they did very little to preserve bebe's atmosphere or schedule, and thus they got what they deserved. which was waking hour, after waking hour, with a fussy baby who could not be consoled. they acted, in short, like a couple of rookies.

the worst part about it, and i think lb would agree with me, is that we made this trip to test the travel waters, but more importantly, to give the above mentioned family a chance to spend some time with beebs. we really thought we'd spend the weekend relaxing, watching the others pass her around from person to person, soaking up her normally good-natured baby self. what we got instead was a fussy miss mussy who wanted nothing to do with anyone or anybody. she barely slept unless mommy or daddy held her. and we could hold her and show her to the family, but she was constantly on the verge, one wrinkled, crumpled little quavering lower lip away from meltdown. and there were no pretty colors to look at this time around, unless you find phlegmy, opaque, white-gray spit-up to be awe-inspiring. which sometimes, i suppose it is.