Springfield Quality Time

Aunty Rita came by the house so we got to spend some more time with her before leaving Springfield.

Lydia and I had some back and forth over this giant cradle. Uncle Greg does carpentry as a hobby and made me this solid oak cradle when I was born. My mom has been holding onto it ever since (though I want to say it got loaned out once or twice for baby cousins to use). Now that we live in Seattle transporting this tank was prohibitive so Ernie didn't end up using it, which is sad. 

I like that it has a roof in case we wanted to leave Ernie outside for a while. Surely this thing is bullet proof.

My mom also had a bunch of baby stuff that she wanted us to take. A few things made the cut and others did not. Being baby toys I don't remember playing with any of them so I don't have any sort of emotional attachment to any of it.

They went and brought us take-out Cozy Dog which was very nice.

One of my treasured artifacts from when we won tickets to the World Cup finals in 1994. A good demonstration of how young and confused I was: the match was between Italy and Brazil and I was rooting for Brazil. This was entirely based on the fact that Brazil has a way cooler flag than Italy. I asked my mom to buy me a Brazil t-shirt to wear and she didn't want to, but she made a bet that she would buy me the shirt of whoever won. Brazil won in a shootout so I got my shirt.

I talked to my mom about this recently and she said that Whitney Houston was the pregame show. Not too shabby. I didn't remember that detail.

We made it to the Airbnb in Clayton, MO in time for the man to get swaddled and go to sleepy time.

Ernie Meets the Springfield Crew

Ernie got to experience one of the amazing mornings that Springfield, IL is known for. Every single day the sun comes up there. Amazing.

Sleeping with my baby in my old room was a surreal experience.

We planned an Ernesto meet-and-greet for Springfield friends and family at Rotary Park. I was a bit stressed leading up to this event. I didn't know if anyone would show up, but it turned out just about everyone I know in town showed up. That was nice. I was also concerned that everyone would want to hold him and we were a bit freaked out about germs. He hasn't had contact with that many people and we were concerned about him touching 400 dirty hands plus sitting on the dirty planes breathing in St. Louis farts for 10 hours. We left him in his car seat most of the time to discourage too much handling of him and that seemed to work pretty well.

My mom was really cute because as soon as we got Ernie loaded into the stroller she grabbed it and pushed it over to everyone, like she wanted to show him off.

I have a big family which is nice but I always feel a bit guilty because that means I have about 4 minutes to speak to each person.

I brought Lydia to the home of authentic central Illinois cuisine: Steak 'n Shake. They even had horseshoes advertised on the menu which I was excited about. I didn't order one but I was excited that they were there.

We did some night time strolling around downtown Springfield and took in some sights. There was a historical marker noting that Obama gave his presidential candidacy speech at the Old State Capitol. Historical markers about events that I personally attended makes me feel pretty old, actually.

One of the presents that was in Ern's pile today was this scrunchy book that he likes to kick a whole lot.

Ernie is Now a Fly Boy

Today was momentous milestone for Ernie John: first flight!

It's funny I've checked in to so many flights that I can pretty much do it with my eyes closed, but Big Ern requires a lot more gear than I'm accustomed to have to drag around, so we had to press some different buttons this time. I'm happy to get the bugs out of our travel routine when on a fairly low stakes trip like this so that we'll all be masters by the time Ern decides he wants to leave the country.

Ernie was wondering if he is the 1% when we took him to his first airport lounge.

People were probably worried about sitting next to a baby on the plane but they didn't realize they were sitting next to the best baby in the world.

Linda and Doug live right next to St. Louis' airport so they were a logical first stop on our tour. Ern took a liking to Doug.

I think he was getting fussy so I gave everyone a "how to hold an Ern" tutorial.

Nailed it.

Ernie was excited to see his Springfield grandparents as well. An unexpectedly fun part of having a baby is how much joy he brings to my family, and really strangers as well. Everyone is always smiling at him and trying to get him to laugh.

I didn't realize how bad things had gotten in Springfield since I last visited. They seem to have resorted to using pickles as currency.