In Part 1, we made it to Nashville...
The think I forgot to mention in the last post was that the trip to Nashville almost didn't happen. The night that we got into Knoxville, we got a call from some friends from church that their daughter just came down with Hand, Foot, Mouth disease. The complicating factor was that I had dropped Nathan off at their house THAT VERY MORNING while I went in for a quick OB appointment. We had also been around her the previous Saturday night for a birthday part and at church on Sunday morning. They were sure that she picked the HFM from someone at church, which meant that Nathan had multiple exposures to (likely) multiple children with the illness. The last thing that I wanted was to be in Nashville with a sick toddler and an 11+ hour drive to get home. I almost called off the trip on Wednesday night, but decided to sleep on it and make the decision on Thursday morning.
Since you know we made it to Nashville, you know what my decision was. After some prayer and a good night's sleep, I decided that this was likely my only chance to make it to Nashville in the next few months (or years?), so I decided to go ahead and go for it. For those who don't know, Nathan never did come down with HFM (thank you God!), and was one of the only kids at the party on Saturday night who missed the bug.
So back to our arrival in Nashville. We were staying at my old college roommate Jen's house. She has a little Yorkie named Chloe, who I wasn't quite sure how Nathan would react to. Initially, Nathan was pretty concerned about this little, energetic bundle of puppy dog, but he quickly warmed up to her. In fact, he was calling her "Chlo-chlo" within half an hour of our arrival (and I'm not sure he ever said Jen's name). Jen and I were super excited to see each other and she was thrilled to meet Nathan. We spent part of the afternoon catching up at her house and then headed out to an early dinner at SatCo.
I have to admit that months ago when I first started thinking about going to Nashville, I was making plans to get a queso fix at SatCo while I was there. And it did not disappoint! (Although I should have brought a stash back with me because I can't seem to get enough good queso during this pregnancy.) Then we headed back to Jen's house because Nathan's bedtime was fast approaching. Nathan went down ok but didn't go to sleep for quite a while; Jen and I could hear him kicking and banging around for probably 45 minutes before he finally settled down!
Jen had quite a treat for me that night: a movie that Jen and I and our suite mates made at the end of freshman year! It was so much fun to see all of our friends (from 10 years ago - yikes!) and some of the movie was pretty hysterical. But the highlight was towards the end as Brian made an appearance! I'm pretty sure that this was before we had even gone on a date, but apparently he had promised me that he would come to a luau that our dorm was hosting. As the evening was coming to a close and he hadn't stopped by, Jen and I (and the video camera) went out in search of him. He finally showed up towards the end of the video (I think he said that he had fallen asleep and that's why he was late to the luau). It was so fun and funny to see us together so many years ago! Then at the very end of the video, there's another short piece of footage of the two of us with some friends watching intermural basketball games in the SAC (student activity center).
Funny side note, I was recounting some of the video over the phone to Carroll (my MIL), and mentioned that the end of the video showed Brian and I together in the SAC. Which, of course, sounds exactly like "the sack". I quickly cleared up what I meant, and we both laughed about it, but OOPS!
Sleep that night wasn't great for either of us. Nathan quickly realized that with the two of us sharing a room, he could pull some "fun" new tricks. Usually if he wakes up in the middle of the night and calls out for me, I ignore him and he falls right back asleep. But he realized that now he could just stand up in his pack-n-play and repeat his request for my attention. So I would tell him that he needed to lay down and go back to sleep, but by then we both were more awake and it was harder to fall back asleep. But we made it through, of course with an early awakening by Nathan the next morning.
The two of us snuck downstairs (of course, disturbing Chlo-chlo while specifically trying NOT to disturb her) and Nathan had lots of fun playing with the decorative rocks that Jen had in a little flower pot on her table as well as other fun "toys" that she had around.
So this was lots of story telling and we still didn't get to any good pictures, so I'm going to leave you with a teaser from the next installment: Lipscomb and our visit with Uncle Joe, Aunt Suzi and Mary!
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