first vacation!

our little rebel came home from (appropriately unauthorized) "mohawk day" at daycare, ready for her first family vacation to santa barbara.

the weekend started off leisurely with saturday at home. we'd planned it that way so as not to spoil our theoretical relaxation with too much rush out the door. violet mugged at the park.



and brunched with her pal ali bell.



this whole restaurant highchair thing is a revelation in itself, but combined with puffs, it's miraculous. she just sits there! eating puffs! she could eat them all day! of course our little featherweight would choose a favorite food that's nearly calorie-free, but there you have it. she loves them. we'll hopefully graduate to cheerios soon. or the "sugarless wholesome o's" that the baby dictators tell you to buy. but probably just cheerios. in any case, we're enjoying the restaurant thing while it lasts because some moms at daycare were telling me that once their kids learned to walk, restaurants were on the outs for awhile. i've been calling this the year of the frozen pizza, but i guess it may end up being more than a year.

on sunday morning we packed up the house, exiled the poor mutts to the kennel, and drove up the gorgeous coast during violet's first nap. kevin and i haven't been to santa barbara together since our wedding, so this was an especially welcome trip since our four-year anniversary is next week.

since we couldn't check into the hotel right away (we stayed at the fess parker doubletree, where we had stayed for a couple of nights leading up to the wedding), we took violet for another first... the zoo! violet was wide-eyed in wonder, and it's a lot more fun to watch her than it is to watch depressed and displaced animals baking in the sun. it's certainly easier to understand the appeal of zoos when in the presence of elated kids. in fact, violet was more taken with the other kids than she was with the exhibits, with one notable exception... sophie le giraffe come to life!







violet was loopy by the time we checked into the hotel. so much crawl space!



we'd brought the pack n play, but upon seeing that the complimentary crib wasn't as medieval as we'd expected, we decided to put our mattress fears aside and let her nap in there while kevin and i enjoyed - what else? - a ryan reynolds movie. sure, we'd seen "just friends" before, but you can't deny the appeal of a fat-guy-loses-weight romantic comedy. violet communicated her opinion by banging her head against the bars yet staying asleep nonetheless.



after feeding violet, i rushed to - what else? - have a glass of champagne.



sure, the wine cask restaurant doesn't LOOK like it caters to babies, but apparently they'd hosted a baby shower there just that afternoon. also it was 5:30pm on a sunday, so it was us, the bartender, and one old guy. considering i can count the number of drinks i've had in the past 18 months on one hand - well, maybe two - that glass was heaven. well, half glass. i gave the rest to kevin. but still! that was letting loose for me. we also let violet loose, and the only thing she wanted more than the fire was my glass of bubbly.



it started with a glass and escalated to the bottle. or bottles.



and then, well.



we spent monday morning and early afternoon driving around the area where we had the actual wedding. we let violet crawl around the floor at zaca mesa winery, and i nursed her in the parking lot at firestone so that i could steal a couple of sips off kevin's tasting. we also stopped to pick up an anniversary cake from our baker, who replicated the chocolate butter cake with peanut butter buttercream filling and frosted in chocolate ganache. that's a lot of butter. we each ate a giant slab in bed that night.

after violet's afternoon nap, we readied for another first - the swimming pool!



unfortunately we forgot the camera, but she LOVED being in the water. we zoomed her around for a good bit until it seemed like her thick layer of sunscreen might be failing. she was so worn out that she actually took an extra catnap before we took her for an early dinner in the hotel bar, and then one last first, the beach.



it was almost the perfect trip, but when we stopped to grab coffee on the way out of town, minutes after violet had fallen peacefully asleep in her carseat, i slammed the door too loudly upon reentry, waking her up for 90 minutes of "the mommy show" in the backseat. let's just say i could live without "if you're happy and you know it" for the rest of my life. also it might have been a little more than the door slam that woke her. i might have been ranting about the incompetence of the coffee shop clerk, who screwed up my order and didn't give me a spoon for my cottage cheese. this after they were out of yogurt parfaits, not to mention the only muffin i like there, thus relegating an always starving breastfeeding mother to cottage cheese. when violet woke up, she totally shared my indignation. which she expressed by pulling my hair and shrieking loudly whenever "the mommy show" tried to take a commercial break.

but it was worth every minute.