It’s been months since I’ve been excited to write our summary post. May was a whole winter’s worth of fun crammed into one giant, busy month. Buckle in. We’re going for a ride.

Kyle has business connections in Charleston and he owed them a visit. We’ve been putting it off, but I’m also absolutely terrified of waiting too long, because I have no idea how to keep a baby cool when the heat index is over 100°F. We’d be stuck indoors. Having just spent a winter stuck indoors…hard pass.

Sometimes you can’t wait for the timing to be perfect, you have to just do it. So we packed up and left. We had to stop every two hours to feed the baby and spend some time out of the carseat, which actually worked out perfectly with Atlas’ current catnap schedule. Traveling with him was a dream.

Our first night we ended up three minutes away from a brewery. Score! Our second night we spent in Tennessee, and we found a restaurant on the water where we could (very quickly, doing all we could to preserve the sanctity of bedtime) have a beer and watch the sun go down. The clear water, red dirt, and lush greenery made a beautiful scene – when we left Michigan, it was all brown and gray, and I really needed to see the world green again.

By Day 3 of travel (we could only spend about six hours traveling per day), we were feeling pretty good about things. The mountains took us by surprise, I had planned on doing a little prep work to make sure tiny ears could handle the pressure changes but Atlas slept through the biggest ups and downs.

We arrived in Charleston and set up camp in an extended stay hotel. Okay, it was a little dirty and the mattress was uncomfortable, but we can live with that. Then, right as we got ready for bed, I saw a cockroach. We decided that we just couldn’t stay here, but since the baby was already asleep we thought we could make it one night. I didn’t sleep at all. In the morning, we killed several more cockroaches. We noped out of there as fast as we could.

We ended up on the doorstep of our wonderful bus club friends, and even though they were out of town they insisted we use their guest room. Absolute life-savers. From their house, we could walk to one of our favorite spots, Shem Creek. Kyle prepared a picnic and I enjoyed my first Mother’s Day as a mom.

The following day, we had plans to meet up with friends for dinner, but when one household called out sick, we pivoted and took Atlas to see his first ocean! At this point I should note that our boy is charming the socks off of everyone he meets, which is how I’ve conned a couple strangers into taking family photos of us.

We met up with a couple great friends, and even got Atlas on his first catamaran (we were only sitting at the dock, but being on a boat again gave both me and Kyle strong feelings). Then we let Atlas earn the “first one in the pool this year” honor. He was not a fan, but the water was freezing cold so I couldn’t blame him!

Atlas decided this was a really good week to start cutting his first tooth, which he let us know at 3am by wailing inconsolably for over an hour. He NEVER wakes up at night anymore, so this was really unusual. Naturally, we had people sleeping in rooms on either side of the guest room so I was feeling pretty stressed about waking up the whole household. When we got up in the morning, Betsy said “There’s my happy boy!” and I’m like “yeah, sure, he’s happy NOW.” She had no idea he’d been crying, in fact, no one woke up besides us!

Our week was quickly disappearing and we both had to get some work done. We holed up in a hotel so that we could spread out, use the desk space, and meet our deadlines. We did take a quick break to walk the Mt. Pleasant Pier at the base of the Ravenel Bridge.

At one point I realized we had no plans to go downtown. It would be such a shame to be here and skip the beautiful historic Charleston! We made a plan for a short stop to walk around a bit, but Atlas fell asleep in the car, so instead we drove around and reminisced. We pulled over to snap one photo, risking waking the baby by shutting the car door, but I got lucky.

Then on to a brewery! Where we sat in the parking lot for 40 minutes while the baby slept. Then we had to feed the baby. Then finally we got some cold drinks, and our whole brewery experience was just so wonderful. I keep thinking it’s pretty easy to travel with a baby, but that’s only because we cater to his schedule. Then second we try to coordinate with someone else, the whole thing collapses like a house of cards.

One more quick stop at the Angel Oak Tree, a 500 year old live oak that is growing in every direction. I really wanted to see what magic I could capture with my wide angle lens. Then, finally, on to the bus club campout.

Some good friends of ours own the property, and they let us stay in their guest room while everyone else camped. It was 95°F the week before we got to Charleston, and while we were here it hovered around a balmy 80°, but we were still very excited to have AC at night because I do worry about the baby’s temp when he sleeps. The campout was amazing, but in typical fashion I have very few photos. The first night we were there, someone showed up with their Tesla-motor-powered VW Beetle (which I firmly believe should be called the “lightning bug”)!

It was a wonderful weekend, and it was over all-too-soon, but I was excited to head home again. And more importantly, I was excited to see our house, which is something I haven’t been able to say in months. The weird thing was that Atlas’ nap schedule had completely changed while we were away, and suddenly traveling was slightly more complicated (still fine, just took a little more effort to keep him from crying near the end of the day).

On our second day of travel north, our navigation app warned us that we should detour off the freeway. Then suddenly it required us to get off the freeway, and the alternate route showed some hairpin turns. What was going on?

The hairpin turns were fine (although there was a semi behind us, he seemed to make it through!), but then we came up to a one-lane bridge. With a weight limit of 12 tons, we really hoped the semi wouldn’t try to cross the bridge while we were on it!

As we criss-crossed the freeway, we could see that it was a parking lot, with everything at a standstill. The other direction was completely empty. The whole freeway must have been closed!

I kept checking the news, and the cause of the major traffic disruption was an armed trespasser facing off with cops on freeway-adjacent property. Yikes! I’m extremely, extremely grateful we did not sit in that traffic with a grumpy baby.

Other than that, travel was fairly uneventful until we made it to our last destination: we had lunch with Kyle’s family in Indiana! Kyle’s Granny met Atlas for the first time! The weather that day was absolutely perfect and we had such a great time, even though it was short.

Back at home again, everything was lush and green. Our yard was almost purple with violets, and since I’ve never seen this house in the spring, everything that popped out of the flower beds was a complete surprise!

We stopped at my parents house a couple times for some gardening supplies and camping gear, and while we were there Mom showed me some wild baby bunnies in her garden! They’re adorable now, and later they’ll eat everything in her garden!

It’s yard sale season, and we have an empty garage. Luckily we really did well at the local sales, and found a lot of normal garage stuff like shovels and rakes. Kyle even found an amazing deal on a table saw for $15, although it needs either a starter or motor.

Then for Memorial Weekend, we went camping at Sleeping Bear Dunes! Technically we didn’t camp at the campout we attended earlier this month, which makes this baby’s first camping trip! Unfortunately, the shores of Lake Michigan were pretty unappealing, absolutely covered in dead fish and flies.

And we were supposed to use the firewood for sale at the campground, but these shredded-wheat-like bricks of sawdust were…disappointing to say the least. They did not work. The first night of camping was a little rough. We made sure to pick up some real firewood after that!

Fitting three people in our VW bus took a bit of thinking, too. Kyle was very creative with his ideas, and even though we had to take out the passenger seat to make it work, it was a great setup. The challenge was that Atlas goes to bed around 7pm, which means we had no access to the bus or our stuff after he went to bed – we had to plan ahead!

We hiked out to Pyramid Point the second day. Uncle Caleb got to hang out with his favorite nephew!

Taking in those beautiful lake views!

The third day we toured the Pierce Stocking Scenic Drive, and while the forecast called for about 70° it ended up being 85°F! A gorgeous day.

By Day 3 we’d really hit our stride, and we got out the pie irons (honestly, what do you call these things? Tonka pies?) and had an amazing dinner over a real log fire.

This kiddo has become very adept at standing, within the last week or so. Now that he’s figured out how to pull himself up, he’s trying to stand everywhere. He hasn’t figured out gravity yet, so we’ve been pretty busy keeping an eye on him!

It was a fantastic weekend of camping, and just overall a really great month. Extremely busy and exhausting, but we’re actually traveling again!

So far Atlas is a great traveler, so we’re very excited about that. We also are going to have to move much slower with a baby. I felt like I never caught up after we got home from Charleston, so we’re going to have to be a little more strategic about how we time things going forward. New month, new challenges!