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We are a road trip family and so once we were mostly over the jet lag we decided to take Nadia on her first road trip. Mike’s Aunt Joy offered one solitary piece of advise before we left for China. She basically said, “Don’t turn your life upside down for the baby. Make her part of your life. She will adjust to the way you live.” (feel free to correct me Joy ) So I have been joking that we are going to take her seriously. Nadia was doing well and needed to meet Mike’s family since she had met lots of my family.

We headed for Joplin, MO on Saturday so Nadia could meet her Grandma Linda, Aunt Sharon and Uncle Stoney, Cousins Jade and Gwen and Sharon’s good friend Amy. We were staying at the Residence Inn in Joplin in the evening and Mike was in the bedroom and I set Nadia down in the sitting area to sterilize her bottles. She was fascinated by the carpet because it had dots on it and she was spending some time touching each dot in front of her.

Then she saw DADDY and when I turned around she was crawling towards him. It was awesome and I started screaming, “She’s crawling, she’s crawling!!!” I almost started to cry and Mike said, “Grab the camera.” So we got it on video.

What is so amazing about this is that 3 weeks ago when we got Nadia she couldn’t sit up on her own and now she is pulling up and crawling. It’s just amazing what the power of touch and constant attention can do for children. And her hair is really growing in nicely on that bald spot on the back of her head. She is doing much better with the solid foods now that she is used to the spoon.

So Sunday we visited with Sharon and them for about 45 minutes and then we hit the road on our way east to Myrtle Beach to meet up with Mike’s cousin Eddie, his wife Kim, and all their kids. Evan, Julie, Claire and Regan. We got as far as Birmingham on Sunday, grabbed a hotel and then drove the rest of the way today.

Nadia did great on her first road trip and now she is totally used to the car seat which is great. Tomorrow morning we will take her down to the beach for the first time and the kids are so excited. We got here and they had onesies, a beach towel and beach toys for Nadia. She was just having so much fun playing with the kids tonight which was really cute.