Footloose and Baby Free

So we spent our first night away from Lucia over Labor Day. I barely lasted 24 hours and managed to peel into my parents house just minutes shy of a full day away. Don't get me wrong, it was a lot of fun, but seriously felt like a piece of me was missing. Here is the run down:

We dropped Luci off with my Mom and Dad after a night of no sleep and a morning of, me saying "does she have a cold? what about a fever, she feels warm", and Tommy responding with, "I think she is fine...we aren't going are we?" Well we went. Leaving at noon, stopping in Salem to drop off a chainsaw to Rex, at the bar (we had to have a red beer right?), and finally hitting Newport around 4pm. Christine, Drew and Scott were waiting on the porch looking relaxed after a day of crabbing and lounging in the sun. Appealing. We unpacked, cracked a beer and settled in. That is, after I called my Mom to check in on Luci. (I only called one more time before bed to make sure that she went to bed on time, which is really pretty good considering I thought abuot just jumping in the car and making a run for it frequently. Not because I wasn't enjoying myself, I just missed my girl.)

Anyway -- we played board games, then graduated to Texas Hold 'Em, onto really big beers and a feast of crab bread, crab salad, tuna loin and crab fettucini alfredo...oh and clams, steamed artichoke and steak. Seriously. It was like Iron Chef with seafood.

At midnight we went down to the beach for a bonfire, it was that nice outside and didn't trudge back home up 90stairs (I counted) until 2:30am. Tommy and I curled into bed and looked at photos & videos of Luci on my phone until I couldn't hold my eyes open any longer. Morning came and I shot out of bed, dressed and cleaned up a bit in the front of the house before waking Tommy up, much to his dismay, to hit the road. I drove. We got home in record time and the best part was that when I walked into the den to get Lucia, she looked up, smiled this huge, goofy, still toothless grin and scrambled right over to me. There is nothing like it in the world. There is nothing like her in the world, and while I have to leave again for a wedding in a few weeks, I doubt that trip will be more than 24 hours long either.