Trip to Seattle

Billy and I are in Seattle for 3 days and 2 nights for Billy's interview at University of Washington.  It's been raining and about 50 degrees ever since we got here (who'd have thought) and everything is super green and moist.  I'm surprised that there isn't more moss growing everywhere.

Street near where we're staying.  

In Denmark, we stayed in apartments, which we found surfing www.airbnb.com, the BEST site for looking for homier places to stay when traveling.  We found one place in Northgate (a suburb just north of Seattle) that was only $85/night.  It's the basement apartment of someone's home and has a living room, kitchen, nice bedroom, and a beautiful bathroom WITH HEATED FLOORS.  We're able to buy some food and cook it for breakfast, which is so nice and saves us a bit of money.  The owners live upstairs and are super approachable.  They even let us use their car to go pick up some food and buy some groceries one night.  Anyhow, totally worth a gander if you're looking to travel anywhere and don't really want to stay in a hotel.  

The first place we went is to Serious Pie, home of the "best pizza" in Seattle.  When I was here in June, I tried to go with a few people that were with me for the conference, but it was like an hour wait, so we went to another restaurant instead.  The next night, after I had left, everyone was able to go.  So I've lamented the fact that I've missed out on really great pizza up until yesterday.  

Waiting for our name to be called.

Billy's so "serious"

We met up with Billy's friend from high school, Kevin, and his wife, Catherine, who live in Seattle (and who are now moving to Palo Alto because Kevin, who used to work for Microsoft, just got a job with Facebook). 

Me, Kevin, and Catherine.

After eating at Serious Pie, I took Billy down to Pike Place.  I was excited for Billy to see it.  I love going to city markets, even if they are tourist traps.  I love people watching, listening to random people play musical instruments on the sidewalk, and perusing the stalls filled with really expensive touristy trinkets.  Pike's place also has some really great eating establishments, such as Piroshky Piroshky, a Russian bakery, and Pike Place Chowder, home of the best clam chowder ever.

The inside of the market.

Billy photobombing my picture.

We also went to the EMP/SFM (Experience Music Project/Science Fiction Museum).  As some of you may be aware, I LIKE science fiction a lot.  I've seen pretty much every Star Trek TNG episode and love books like Dune.  I know, totally dorky.  So, this museum was perfect for me and perfect for Billy, since he's a huge music enthusiast.  Part of the building is devoted to music: they have a Northwestern music timeline that highlights some of the major musical happenings here in Washington in the last century (did you know that Ray Charles got his start here, Quincy Jones used to be a trumpeter with a band that played here, and that Willie Nelson was a local DJ here?); they had a whole Jimi Hendrix exhibit; and a room where you can play with all sorts of instruments and crazy cool high-tech music mixing and making devices.  

Listening to music and watching the cool screen change.  Desmond had just taken a really big poop and Billy had to go to the men's room (which had a changing table!  Yay!  You have no idea how important those are now.  I had to change Desmond once on the floor of a bathroom at a restaurant.  I didn't even want the changing mat touching the floor...) to change him.  His entire really cute outfit had to be changed.  Ha ha ha!  

 Instrument sculpture at the entrance of the music part of the museum.

We got there kind of late, so we weren't able to enjoy the science fiction part as much as we would have liked, but we did get to see the Battlestar Galactica exhibit (too bad I know almost next to nothing about Battlestar Galactica) and the science fiction genre timeline.

 Me doing my "boldly go" stance.  I'm finally wearing some pre-pregnancy clothes.  Can't you tell (that I shouldn't be wearing them yet)?

The museum is literally right next to the Space Needle.  Although we didn't go all the way to the top ($18 freaking dollars per adult), we got to take a picture of it coming out of our heads.

Lessons learned about traveling with an infant:

• Always pack an extra set of clothes.  Diaper blowouts can happen at ANY time.  And probably the most inopportune time.
• Don't go on all day sight-seeing marathons.  Desmond loves to be worn; however, hanging out in a baby bjorn all day is probably not the greatest feeling.  I'm sure his legs and hips get a bit sore after a while.  Furthermore, we completely disregarded the fact that human beings rest best when lying down and took for granted that Desmond takes naps while being worn a lot of the time.  After a while, Des was skipping his naptimes and just fussing.  He wanted to lie down.  (FYI, his nap times are usually at 11am, 3pm, and 7pm.  He usually goes to bed at around 11pm and wakes up at 830 or 9.  And no, he's not sleeping through the night, either.  He's an infant with a stomach the size of...something small.  He gets hungry about every 3-4 hours).  
• When sightseeing outside in cold weather while wearing your baby, do not put him in too many layers.  We made that mistake and Desmond was miserably hot.  Poor little guy was sweating so bad that we took off his jacket, hat, and leg warmers.  We put him in the baby bjorn in just his pants and his basic white onesie and Billy zipped his jacket up over Desmond.  We put the hat his Aunt Melanie made for him and he was as happy as can be.  Don't underestimate the power of body heat.
• When baby starts getting fussy and you think he may be tired, instead of heading home, try taking him out of the carrier and facing him towards you.  He may be overstimulated and may just want to block everything out and sleep.  It's worked a few times with Desmond.

*Christy, thanks for the bjorn!  Billy loves wearing it!