When Jon's Away...

I hate it when Jon leaves on trips. Luckily it hasn't happened very often and then usually not for very long. However, I still hate it. I was particularly dreading this last trip as it would be the first time I was totally alone with Seth. Yes, it was just 3 days, but 3 days with a newborn can be exhausting.

To help time go by faster I made sure we had at least one thing to look forward to every day Jon was gone. On Tuesday we went to the hospital (to weigh Seth--not for an injury) and then shopping at Target. Wednesday was crazy busy: I planned on taking Seth to the playgroup at church, but he fell asleep and I wasn't waking him. Once he was up and fed, we went to Sommer's to drop off the maternity clothes I'd borrowed--and ended up staying for 5 hours or something ridiculous like that. Then we went to the library, then to Dawn's for dinner. I was secretly hoping that I would wear the kid out and get him to sleep well that night, but no such luck.

Thursday, however, was the real adventure. Before I give you the full story, please be so kind as to participate in this short quiz:

Q). What city has the second highest murder rate in the entire United States?
A). Baltimore, Maryland

Q). What were Megan, Seth & Sommer doing last Thursday night from 10 to 11 pm?
A). Wandering the streets of Baltimore by ourselves
Here's how it happened:Sommer's hubby acquired tickets to a Baltimore Raven's NFL game while I was at her house visiting. Sadly, he had a church meeting he couldn't get out of so Sommer invited me instead (the real irony being that Jon was the one who was supposed to be at that meeting, but he was obviously unable to attend).

I was excited, as I've never been to a pro football game before. Then I started getting nervous that Seth wouldn't cooperate--a totally unfounded fear as this kid is never unhappy. Eventually I just loaded up the diaper bag with necessities for all possible situations (including an extra blanket to cover his ears with if it got too loud) and headed to Sommer's.

After a delicious pizza dinner, Sommer & I headed down to Baltimore. We only got slightly lost once, thanks to the stupidity of East Coast exit/entrance ramps (oh, how I miss the efficiency of the freeways out West). As we were really late to the game--thanks to our children--we managed to find free parking at a church near the stadium. Well, sort of near. It would have been a lot closer if we'd actually walked directly toward the stadium instead of somehow circling around it and coming in from the other side...

We showed up just in time for the 4th quarter. I figured Seth would knock himself out--noise usually lulls him to sleep. Instead, he spent the entire time staring over Sommer's shoulder at the flashing lights of the billboard screens. Yes, I know. Over-stimulating my child, blah, blah, blah... But he was really good. And he took a bottle (and by "took" I mean chugged it down like I was never going to feed him again).

Let me just say this: Ravens football has nothing on BYU football. This is possibly because I have a vested interest in BYU games, but I've always enjoyed college sports more than pro sports. In case you care, the Ravens lost 9-10.

Now the fun part. Since we managed to enter the stadium in such a roundabout way, we figured we'd just go out the opposite entrance, thus putting us closer to our car. We were feeling pretty sure of ourselves for about 10 minutes. That's when all the other people leaving the game had cleared out and we found ourselves on a dark, shady sidestreet with people eyeing us and cars full of guys yelling out their windows. At that point Sommer starting panicking and I started smiling at everyone we walked past, figuring they were less likely to rob/murder us if we looked like we knew what we were doing.

Luckily for us, Ben was home from his meeting at that point and acted as our GPS. Let's just say we were TOTALLY lost. Here's the map of our journey (stolen from Sommer's blog):
View Larger Map

'A' is the stadium
'E' is our car
'B' is where we were when Sommer called Ben.
We're awesome

I got home just in time to feed Seth at midnight, put him to bed, and then be half asleep when Jon got home around 1:30 am. And no, Seth still didn't sleep longer than his 4.5 hour max. He also came down with a cold that weekend, which made me feel like a horrible mother.

To thank Ben for saving our lives (and because it was Sommer's birthday) I pulled out the cake decorating skills and went to work.