Things Are Going Swimmingly, Or Perhaps I Should Say Knittingly?

For the curious, I did indeed make it to my mom's without incident this past weekend. Baby Girl was, for the most part, extremely well-behaved while on the road. The first night we stopped and got a hotel room about eight or so, which gave me almost two hours to chill and her some time to run around and expend energy before it was time to start her going-to-bed routine. I did not take her pack 'n play into the hotel with me on Friday night  because I wanted to see if she could just share a bed with me. This was...not my brightest idea. While eventually she did settle down and sleep more or less in the middle of the bed, she was pretty restless all night. I got very little quality sleep because of this (and because she, at one point, kicked me in the frakking eyeball just as I was drifting off--which didn't wake her up in the slightest, despite my loud and startled reaction). Other than that though, things went mostly pretty well.

The second day of driving was much better than the first, mostly because it was shorter. I will say, the gas station restroom we stopped at in Missouri on Saturday was far and away much nicer than anything we stopped at in Oklahoma or Kansas. This includes the Love's I stopped at, hoping for a safe haven of sorts in that department, which had a just plain scary bathroom. It continues to baffle me how many so-called "travel stations" have either no changing table or just despicable bathrooms overall. I know, I know, gas station bathrooms, who cares? But, man, I do. Especially being on my own with my daughter. I would like to find some place (relatively at least) clean and with a convenient (or at least not inconvenient) location for changing my child's diaper. Sigh. Sorry, ending rant now.

Anyhoo. I am very much enjoying the visit with my mom and stepdad so far. My grandparents (my mom's parents) even surprised me by coming up to visit Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon. They had hoped to stay for my mom's birthday (which is tomorrow), but my grandfather is not in the best of health and traveling takes its toll on him. Still, it was wonderful to get to see them.

My mom has commented once or twice about how hot and muggy it has been here the last few days and it just makes me laugh. While I will concede that it is a little muggy, it's hardly anything to annoy me. As far as heat goes, well, it's been in the mid-80s range and supposed to stay that way throughout my stay. Compare that to the high-90s/triple digit temperatures that the DFW area has been seeing, and well...I think you understand why I think the mid-80s is a perfectly wonderful temperature range.

Of course, no visit with my mom would be complete without a trip to the local yarn store. Saturday afternoon we ventured to the shop where she works, a wonderful little store called Knitted Together. I did treat myself to a few goodies while there:

Cascade Yarns 220 Superwash Quatro in Green Tea.

Cascade Yarns 220 Superwash Quatro in Summerdaze.

Interweave Crochet, Winter 2010 and Summer 2011 issues.

I would have gotten three skeins of the green Quatro (come on, it's called "Green Tea," for Pete's sake, how could I resist), but there was just that one lonely ball in the store. So the blue will have to keep it company I suppose. I feel I showed remarkable restraint, overall, just getting the three balls. There were five balls of a spiffy grey wool on sale that I was eyeing but managed to talk myself out of purchasing. My space for yarn storage is at a minimum at the moment and without knowing what specific or even type of project I wanted to make with it, well, it really wasn't justifiable.

As far as the magazines go, they both have lots of wonderful patterns I want to try, including the cover patterns shown on each. So exciting!

So as we head into the week, I am a very happy Cori, hanging out with my mom, knitting, reading, playing with the kiddo. Trying to help my mother explain Dolores to my grandmother. It's good times. The Doctor Who scarf is even growing for the first time in months, huzzah!

Oh, and in case you were wondering, Baby Girl is so sleeping in the pack 'n play from here on out.