Week 11 - On the Road

It's Liams first road trip and we are currently staying in Courtenay courtesy of Grandma Marg - we may as well be back in Victoria since we brought the entire house with us. Our new sporty Mazda has been redecorated to look like an infant mobile. Not only do we have the ginormous "must be able to see the baby in the rear view" mirror strapped to the centre of the back seats, we are also paranoid of him getting burned by the sun off the windows and have pasted two large screens (one red, one blue with elephants and the words JUNIOR all over them I might add) on the back windows to block out the rays. How very practical for him and how very blaringly obvious that we're overprotective parents. You can see our pimped out baby ride a mile away. As you get closer you notice that buried between a mountain of parafanalia (what if you need the glow worm when you're only away for 5 days) is a small moving object that resembles a child. I thought my diaper bag was overstuffed; going on a trip is another story. After hours of packing enough baby outfits for a month, multiple sets of towels (because hotels don't carry towels you know), giant size packs of Pampers diapers, creams, lotions, bath products, hair brushes (because babies have so much hair) and every other baby item known to man, I loaded the entire lot at the back door for Ian to pack. The look of "are you insane" was clearly pasted across his face as he kept filling the car and I kept running around adding last minute "we may need this" items and checking off my list (some things never change). Finally the sardine Wards were ready to hit the road. I must say I am impressed with the storage capacity of the Mazda as the stroller is so big it took up the entire trunk space leaving us with only the front and back seats. So what if you couldn't see anything except our eyeballs deep in stuff, the point is that we managed to bring our home away from home for a 15 pound lump.

Our first stop was to Costco to pick up a salad for Ian's company picnic in Parkesville. We had just made it to the salad aisle when Mr. Fussy started up so I promptly picked him up and felt something warm oozing onto my hand. Upon looking down I saw a familiar yellow substance which had managed to leak all over his lovely Gap tropical outfit. Diaper bag in hand and Mr. Poop Pants in the other I made the all too familiar beeline for the bathroom. No sooner had I got him changed and back out (this time pants free), he decided to do another big squirt which promptly sent me straight back to the bathroom. After changing him again and starting to walk out the bathroom Mr. Poopy Pants decided that three's the charm and projectile vomited all over the floor. That was it for me, I ran back in the bathroom, grabbed handfuls of wet paper towel and high tailed it out of there, being careful to step over the milk puddle on my way out. Luckily Ian had managed to rinse off his poopy shorts and being the smart daddy that he is, lay them on the back seat to dry. By the time we hit Parkesville you would never have known that we were poo covered and barf covered an hour before - we are getting good! We spent the rest of the afternoon relatively poo free and enjoyed a nice bbq while relaxing on our violent red & yellow picnic blanket. We are definitely losing the cool factor.

So now we are in Courtenay & off tomorrow to Vancouver for a conference till Wed. Stay tuned, I'm sure we will have more adventure coming our way!