The Pope Kiddos: 7 months

Abby's 7th month was a busy one! Almost as soon as Thanksgiving ended, Chanukah began. We enjoyed our 8 nights of gifts. Abigail didn't know what was going on but she did like the presents and watching the candles burn down.

But most of the month was spent traveling, traveling, traveling. All the girls left for California on December 11th for almost a month in California. It had been over a year since we've visited (since we moved!) and Abby had never been there before. The grandparents and other friends and family were especially excited to meet her.

Traveling alone with 2 kids wasn't terrible. There were other families on all of our flights with much worse kids so that always makes my girls look especially sweet. Daddy did drive us to the airport and get all of our luggage checked in at Sky Cap so we only had to deal with our carry-ons in the airport. Unfortunately there isn't any way to take a direct flight from Connecticut to California, so we flew to Denver first, changed planes, then on to Sacramento and then ended with a 2-hour drive to Redding. What a long day. The flights were 3 1/2 hours and 2 1/2 hours. Abigail did great on her first flights (I think Lily had flown 8 or so times by Abigail's age). We were very glad to get to California. Apparently, California didn't want us to stay too long because we had nasty weather the whole time we were there. We saw the sun a few times and it was a good 20 degrees warmer but it was rainy and gray most of the time we were there.

The happy travelers.

In the middle of our trip (when we drove down to pick up Daddy) we stopped in Davis to visit Scott's old boss from the very first lab he worked in and to reminisce and wonder if we might live in Davis again someday. Then we headed to San Francisco for the night to meet up with old college buddies and a couple of Scott's UCLA lab mates. We spent a few hours at the Exploratorium in San Francisco and Lily thoroughly enjoyed running around enjoying science and Abby mainly enjoyed yelling at another baby (she loves babies).

Abigail thoroughly enjoyed her first Christmas. She figured out the opening presents deal pretty quickly and loved ripping the paper. She also didn't mind the constant attention which meant being held a lot of the time. She definitely likes being the center of someone's attention at all times (middle child syndrome?). Grandma even got to babysit and mommy and daddy got to go see a movie (only the 2nd one in 7 months). We came back to Abby sleeping on Grandma and not in her bed. Big surprise, her favorite place to sleep is on someone else.

Just a couple days after Christmas we headed South to visit the other set of grandparents. Our flight from Sacramento to San Diego was very delayed; 4 hours for a 1 1/2 hour flight. We could have driven at that rate. Oh well, we stopped in Davis for lunch then went to the airport.

Southern California was also busy. We visited Disneyland, Legoland, Los Angeles and went sailing in our week there. Abby was mainly just along for the ride but she did enjoy seeing a few more babies: Addie in LA who's only a month older than her and another Addie who was visiting San Diego who's about Lily's age and Jake who's somewhere in between Lily & Abby.