Galavanting around the country

While I've noted the absence of baby and mom, I haven't posted much about where they've gone. It turns out that our little Maggie has been quite the little traveller this summer.

First, she went to Abby's ancestral homeland, Washington, IL, where everyone apparently was quite taken with her.

Abby and the kid spent the weekend hanging out with Abby's high school friends. Central Illinois doesn't appeal to me too much (row after row of corn!) so Maddie and I spent that weekend backpacking through western VA. We learned that all of my backpacking stuff is way too geared for long trips which aren't in our future anytime soon. And we also learned that we're both getting older (and, as a result, can be pretty darn sore after a day of backpacking.)

Then, there was the trip to Green Lake, MN which I documented earlier. Again, Maddie and I didn't tag along since we sat at home and dealt with technological issues. But Margaret and Abby appear to have had a great time, although the kid was suffering from an ear infection which made her pretty fussy at certain times of the day. Apparently, the Green Lake crowd was NOT as wowed by lil' Margaret since she can bellow up a storm when she's not happy.

This past weekend, we went to the Delaware shore with the Philadelphia cousins. Just as I'm not a central IL fan nor am I a MN lake fan, I'm not much of a beach fan. Lots of sitting around accompanied by occasional bouncing in the water and lots of sand that gets into everything. But we had a pretty fun time. I liked the sea kayaks, Abby appeared to get some quality reading time in (starting the newest Harry Potter book - which required some notification to avoid spoilers from the other Harry Potter fans), and Maggie seemed to find her cousins just as entertaining as she has in the past. The kid did holler some this morning at around 5:30 AM (raising concerns that the neighbors would complain leading to the dreaded "loss of the security deposit" as threatened on notices throughout the house), but I don't think that the Philly relatives, with three kids of their own, can be scammed by the generally sweet baby since they know, as do Abby and I, that a little terror dwells just under the surface. We did hire Alex, the eldest cousin, to monitor Margaret for Saturday night. $3 was my offer (Alex held out for $5) with a $1 deduction for every incident involving blood. Luckily, no such events occurred as Alex was incredibly attentive of her little cousin. More, I think, than she often is with her own siblings. Perhaps, however, her parents haven't given her the appropriate incentives. Although monitoring Andrew would probably require a payment greater than $5 (at least, it would for me.)