Greetings from the edge of the Great Smoky Mountains!

The last few days have been a blur. It might have been a little ambitious to do as much as we had planned these last few days, but it’s been memorable and a lot of fun (for me at least 😬😍). Arden is generally doing well — she seems to be sleeping and eating fairly regularly (waking herself up every 1-3 hours to feed) and so I’ve started to put her down after she falls asleep, even if I end up running back in 5mins when she stirs. We tested the binkie but she wasn’t having any of it. We did have occasion to use the little suction bulb and out came some boogers successfully!

The binkie stays in all of 3 seconds. Arden has discovered she can push things out of her mouth with her tongue.

To prepare for our trips, we got some extra storage on Otto (the car). Thank goodness they had the exact model I wanted at REI!! A tub on Otto’s roof just wouldn’t have worked.

Yay REI for free installation! I checked out baby outdoor gear while there. Geez whiz the things that are in our future…

So off we went to Sewanee to meet Tandy’s very old friend Anne. It’s been a delight to get to meet many of Tandy’s old friends and I’ve enjoyed getting to know my wife through different eyes, at different times in her life. This is the Perimeter trail on the property of The University of the South — a private Episcopal liberal arts college built in the 1800s. A very pretty campus with wonderful woods.

She hadn’t pooped in about 48 hours (doc said this is quite normal) and when she got to the woods, she exploded into what seemed like 3 diapers worth of poop. Tip #1 The new car storage tub surface doubles up well as a diaper changing table. Tip #2 – don’t put poopie diapers on the ground or your dog, well, gets into it 💩🐶. Tip #3 — if a yellow spot suddenly appears on the front of the baby’s outfit, don’t touch or smell it. It could be poop!! 💥🤯

This trip didn’t seem like much at all but I was completely spent on Friday and spent most of it sleeping, even though Aaliyah came and supported us Thursday night. She cooked THE MOST AMAZING beef short ribs overnight (did we mention she had culinary training?!) and most of it was gone before dinner. 🤤 I will restrain myself next time and take a picture for y’all before I dig in (at breakfast…)

Speaking of food.. Arden is getting chubby! Some of the donor breast milk has a lot more fat than my breast milk (layer of yellow when frozen). Her little fat rolls are quite impressive 😄

Arden looks pretty loopy here! From the trace amounts of Zoloft and Adderall perhaps? Oh my.

Saturday was the 101 year anniversary of our neighborhood! So we went and walked around with Ingrid and here is our silly outdoor photo booth pic.

Tandy was very generous and let me have some playtime without Arden. Time away from the baby is just as key for me as time with! Here we are paddle boarding on the Cumberland.

Today has mostly been about getting packed up for this three-night trip to the Smokies. I swear at least half of the things in the car are Arden-related…