A Visit to Vacaville - including several "firsts"

Today we went to a party for Sean at Jenny and Steve's house in Vacaville. It's about an hour away, and so we timed leaving to coincide with Judith's naptime, hoping she'd sleep most of the way. At the same time, in case she didn't, we got out the new car seat for the first time. It's one of those that "converts" from rear-facing to front-facing once Judith hits the age/weight limit. She's definitely getting too long for her infant seat. It took Lance a good hour to figure out how it went in the car, but I'm sure that'll get better as we get used to it. It's been sitting unwrapped in the house for about a week, and Judith's shown some interest in it, although she didn't try to sit in it or anything. I thought it would be a good distraction if she decided she didn't want to sleep. (She didn't really react to it at all, and she went to sleep within 5 minutes of being in the car, so I guess it's just fine.) All-in-all, despite some occasional heavy traffic, the trip there was uneventful, although we discovered that the air conditioning in my car, usually ok when you go over 60, was pretty much non-functional in the 107 degree heat.

There was a 5-week old baby girl at the party - she was a couple ounces bigger than Judith when she was at birth, but to me it seemed like she must be a LOT smaller - hard to believe Judith was ever that small and fragile! There was also a 6 month little boy, whom Judith got to interact with a little bit. More and more she's learning how to deal with other kids.

The big first of the day was the pool! We weren't quite sure how Judith would react to a pool - she loves the bathtub, but that's warm water...etc. We've been wanting to try her in a pool for awhile, but our June weather has been strange, and a few weekends ago when we were up in Chico, it was too cold for swimming. So this was her first experience. Grandpa Tim took her out to see it, and apparently she tried to dive in. Once we all changed into swimsuits, Lance took her in. (We used the "hot tub" for Judith, because it was 86 degrees, several degrees warmer than the pool - besides, no one else was in it.) No question, she loved it. She splashed, dunked her face, stuck out her tongue to taste the water, "swam" back and forth between Lance and me, played with water toys, and had a great time! (See pictures throughout this post.) I was a little afraid that she'd protest getting out of the pool, but she was fine with that too.

When we left, the sun had moved too far for the car to be in the shade any longer - so it was extremely hot (and see the note above about the non-functional air conditioner!). It was a very very hot trip home. Judith slept for about 30 minutes, and then sort of whimpered the rest of the way. We couldn't see her, but we were guessing she was hot. By the time we pulled into the driveway she was pretty upset. When I got her out of the car seat, she was very red in the face, and blotchy-red on the rest of her body. My first thought was that she'd gotten really sunburnt in the pool (I did put sunscreen on her, but was afraid it had washed off or something) and she was SO hot that I thought the only way to cool her down would be with a cold shower. So her third "first" of the day was a shower with Mommy. Then I got out the Aloe Vera. Turns out, though, that she had just totally overheated in the car, and wasn't sunburnt. The cold shower, and then crawling around with just a diaper on, made the redness fade pretty quickly. It sure was scarey there for a few minutes, though! We'll be careful to take Lance's car anytime we need to go on a trip in the heat again - his air conditioner works very well.


In other news, Judith now has six teeth. I'd been waiting and waiting for the next teeth to come in, assuming the would be on the bottom - but she's got two eyeteeth on the top just barely visible.