Well, that went better than we had any right to expect

We went down to Savannah this weekend to meet my new nephew. With ARR.

ARR started things off on an ominous foot by throwing up his entire breakfast in the car on the way to the airport. So I got to try to deal with the fact they put us in a row babies can't be in while Chuckro got him into fresh clothes. It took long enough that Chuckro got back in time to help, which is good because he's better at browbeating than I am.

But ARR loved the airport, mostly for the ramps. There were three other babies on the flight, and ARR was nowhere near the whiniest. Actually, he slept half the flight and played nicely for the rest.

My brother lives in a beautiful little house in one of the suburb-y parts of Savannah. His two-month-old F is a sweet little thing. Still in larval stage, though--he doesn't do much besides cry and occasionally flail fitfully, and they're not getting much sleep yet. I think interacting with ARR was actually kind of helpful for them--it reminded them that there's a lot of fun times ahead if they can just slog through this part.

Fortunately, F does a lot less puking and is a lot more tolerant of wet diapers than ARR was at that age, so we could actually go out for a bit. Unfortunately, most of the fun things to do in Savannah are outside--and it was cold and poured for most of the weekend. I'd packed a couple days early, before the weather forecast changed, and we ended up having to do laundry halfway through because I'd brought insufficient warm things. But ARR had fun, despite bouncing off the walls. We played with new toys and explored a bunch of things and almost drowned in a mud puddle. (He tripped and faceplanted. He was mostly just startled, but had water to his ears.)

Really nice. My brother's seen ARR for all of 40 minutes back in July. I've never had a real conversation with his wife. They're both military and she's from a big family, so they just don't have a lot of free time. So it was great to actually hang out with them not at a big family event with 20 other people. Really stressful, though--a 2 month old and a 14 month old do not make for a quiet house. We tried to make it up to them by making them a lot of food for their freezer.

We left super early for the airport, which my brother teased me about. I'm glad we did--the tickets were screwed up again, and TSA gave us a big hassle over ARR's formula. They wanted to open it all, which would then make it all expire an hour later and leave us with nothing to feed him. Chuckro finally convinced them to pat him down instead. Which makes no sense at all to me ( A: Formula is specifically exempted in the regulations and B: what does patting him and not me and ARR do if we were terrorists hiding explosives in formula?). But it got us through. Chuckro's convinced it's because he hadn't shaved in a couple days.

But ARR was incredibly good on the flight home. Played quietly in our laps, barely whined, didn't cry at all. Didn't kick things or bother people. Was just sweet and happy and perfect. It was amazing.