RT: continued again

So Victor is starting to suck his thumb. He's been working up to it--sucking his fist, sucking his fingers, sucking other people's thumbs--but now he seems to have figured out how awesome his own thumbs are for chewing and/or sucking. As a former thumb sucker myself, I can only express pride in his accomplishment.

He's also much more grabby and aware of things now. Just this morning he was trying to grab a hat I have hanging off the back of a chair. In his little jungle gym dangly toy thingy he actually grabs for the toys instead of flailing around randomly hitting them. And I think he's been going through a growth spurt the past few days because he has been sleeping sleeping sleeping and eating. He even feels heavier! I wish I had an accurate digital scale at home because I would totally weigh him every day and make graphs of his progress. Maybe for child # 2.... ;)

Now back, back, back to the roadtrip. Over a week ago. Sheesh. So last Saturday we had an early night, which means Victor got us up even earlier than usual. Which turned out well because we wanted to go see the redwoods! So we drove about an hour north to Big Basin, a park of, you guessed it, redwoods! It was so nice to drive through actual forests on small two lane roads again! Although some of the roads got REALLY small and windy with blind corners for oncoming traffic next to sheer dropoffs.... eeeeeee! But we made it, and it was just gorgeous. We stopped for a bit and went a little ways down one of the trails. Of course, Mr. Victor decided to get hungry so we had to turn around before too long. Which wasn't bad, either, because I wanted to meet up with some of my cousins who live in San Jose. Cara and Alyssa are my second cousins, and Cara lives there with her husband Ben, and Alyssa just happened to be visiting her that weekend--lucky coincidence! We managed to meet up with them (spotty cell service because of giant trees! Who knew!) in a cute little town on the outskirts of San Jose called Los Gatos. Nice little lunch, nice little chat, a little bit of ice cream, what more could you want! It was really hot out, though--in the 90's, easily the hottest we've been since moving out to California. Victor didn't seem to mind too much, though, and he had lots of fun new people to drool on!

After a few hours of catching up Damian and I headed south while Cara, Alyssa, and Ben followed our trail back to the redwoods (oh the joys of no babies to get you up early!). It kind of surprised me that we drove through mile after mile of farmland--I guess this is where California grows all the stuff it is known for growing! The place we stayed in on Saturday night even called itself the "salad bowl of the world." We drove back down the 101 instead of taking 1 again (the winding road up the coast). We stayed Sunday night in a town called Paso Robles, which is known for its wineries--we got there too late for tasting, of course, but there were plenty of liquor stores with souvenirs ;) It was a strange little town--at first we thought it was a cruddy little abandoned place, but we drove around and finally found an adorable city center with nifty restaurants and lots of people.

Monday was our big driving day. We cut east through brown hills of nothing to meet up with the big road, I-5, where, for a change, we drove through miles and miles of orchards--including nut trees, I think. OK, trees on one side, brown nothing on the other. Fairly uneventful trip home, even through LA. We stopped off in the middle of nowhere at one point for feeding and watering because we didn't want to stop in LA. Damian made it through mile 994 of the trip before we had to stop for food and a sequel to the book we had been listening to on tape. They also had a DQ where I was introduced to the buster bar blizzard. If I ever leave Damian for another man, that man will be named Buster Bar Blizzard and we will be very fat and happy together. Fortunately Damian doesn't mind me keeping one small affair, for now ;)

So after 1040 miles, we made it home! hooray! :)