Taking our Show on the Road

We are getting comfortable at home and have taken the little steps towards being a mobile family- going to the grocery store, going to lunch(buffets are best) and so on but always returned home around 4 PM to get ready for the veening routine. Tonight we started to move toward the final frontier-sleeping away from home.

For a low-risk dress rehearsal we packed up and came the full 6 miles from the safe zone at home to spend the night at Abby’s sister’s house Wayland for the night.

We are a long way from traveling light.

It took six bags to get all of Ellie’s essentials loaded in to the car. Between what we knew she would need (food, TPN, pumps, an IV pole, etc) and what she could possibly need (a new ostomy bag, a new central line dressing, etc) it is a lot of stuff. Add in the normal baby stuff like toys clothes and books and a bed and it is quite a load. Add Gus on top of that and we almost forgot our own clothes and toothbrushes.

I am beginning to see the light about minivans even for us with only a baby and a dog.

Going to Wayland was nice for a test run because it is not so far that we are in a world of trouble if we need something important from home.

Which I did not once but twice this evening.

The first was to pick up cotton balls to fill her ostomy. A simple brain fart on my part to forget a staple of our day. Nothing really urgent and we could have solved it with a trip to CVS.

The second was a bit more important since I screwed up and punctured the only IV bag that we had for the night when I was driving the spike into the bottom on the bag. I simply rammed it through the side of the bag.

Not a big deal when the replacement was 6 miles away, but it was an eye opener for what could have been if we had been three hours away.

Only two return visits to get more supplies and a third scheduled for the morning since Abby was bit spastic in the new environs and blew through our supply of saline syringes while hooking Ellie up tonight.

On the bright side, Ellie is a tough bird who played hard all day:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mruXUHpd-IA

Then she fell asleep on the bed while we set up her PN tonight.

We’ll see what she thinks about sleeping in the Pack n’ Play tonight.

If all goes well we will probably do this again to fine tune the routine. Then it is off to the races......