Family Visit - Day 19

We were off on an adventure today, and Phoenix did very well!  He slept the entire car ride there (1.5 hours), and slept the majority of the trip back.  He did well at Mom's house, and even got to be held by his aunt.  Aside for one tiny "oops", it was all in all a good day.  He also popped up to 230g at 1:45am (was worried about his weight gain yesterday) and just hit 240g at 10:45pm today.  That update is mostly for you, Auntie, in lieu of me updating the weight chart tonight.  

Pre-Travel

Visiting my mom and sister who live an hour away usually doesn't get the "travel" title.  It had always been just an hour drive that didn't require much planning.  Hardly sounds like "travel plans" or any kind of "elaborate trip".  It was just visiting family and hanging out.

Somehow having this little guy changed that.  I needed to plan ahead and make sure we had everything we needed.  I had karate in the morning from 9am - 10:30am.  The plan was to leave the house around 12-12:30pm.  I had landed morning feeding to hit around 7am-8am, putting one more feeding between 11am-12pm to get ready for our drive.

So I had pre-packed some of the things that could be pre-packed.  But a bunch of other stuff couldn't be packed until the last feeding we did before we traveled.  This included things like shampoo, ointment, formula, and medication among other things.  But ultimately, everything feel into place, and I was able to pack everything in a box and be ready to go on time!  Regrettably, I forgot to take a picture of this (I thought I did, but we'll add this to yet another thing I completely forgot about).  So instead you get a picture of our evening setup to help with bed-time meals.

Our morning went really well, and most exciting is to see his eyes so open!  Added benefit to open eyes?  It's much easier to tell when he's falling asleep.  Before, the eyes were always close, so it was hard to tell.  Now the eyes are a much easier indicator of whether or not he's starting to fall asleep or whether he's wide awake on the hunt for food.

On Our Trip

It was the first time Phoenix has been away from home for an extended period of time (though Nguyen and I were still with him).  He's been to the vet and we've gone to Linda's house.  But otherwise, we don't really go anywhere.  Truthfully, Phoenix has gotten me out of the house a lot more than I have been.  We pretty conservative with COVID (we even order all our food), so Phoenix has definitely been stretching (pushing past?) my comfort zone.  Also, every time I've ever gone anywhere with Phoenix, it usually isn't just "for fun".  It was a nice change to be going somewhere with him without the, "I hope this doesn't mean he's dying" fear in the background.

But overall, the car ride there went without a hitch.  Well, for Phoenix anyway.  We hit traffic, and our ride went from 1 hour to 1.5 hours.  Of course, being as paranoid as I am, I had to check in on the little guy.  I realized I could just hold my phone back there and snap a photo and hope that I caught him in there.  I ended up catching a pose that made me laugh.

Of course, I also had a moment of, "wait, what if he's dead and just lying that way."  So I had to snap another photo a few minutes later.  I was quite relieved to see he had moved to a new position.

Arriving at Mom's place, I got some commentary on all the stuff I had brought.  I had a boxed filled with everything I needed to get me through a day away from home.  And thankfully, I hadn't forgotten anything.  We had everything we needed, and most of our time there went nicely.  Though I did get some parenting advice from my mom as well as a reminder of how I  was covered in poop as a baby much the same way the kitten was.  Hah.

As I mentioned, there was one oops moment.  I had to give Phoenix his last dose of Ponazuril; what could go wrong?  Well, you could just miss.  Completely.  On the bright side, I ended up shooting the dose onto my finger instead 😩.  So... I just tried to get him to eat it off of there.  I don't know how much ended up on his mouth and how much ended up around his mouth.  But it was definitely a kitten-mom fail on my part.

Eventually, about 7-8 hours after arriving, it was time to head home.  On our way out, we ran into a cute little frog.  My mother asked me if I wanted to take this guy in and feed him milk, too 😂.  I declined, but opted to just snap a photo instead.

Videos

Here's just a few videos I have from today that might be worth a watch.

A video that gives a shot of his eyes.  The photo of his eyes in the blog above was actually pulled from this video.

He started doing this sometime between last night and this morning.  He actually "sits" like a cat would and then kind of looks around.  I wish I knew what he was thinking!

Random Musings

Important blog question.  If you put an emoji at the end of the sentence... does it replace the need for a period?  Does the period come after?  Does it come before?  Do you do both?  If you have an opinion, let me know through the comments or otherwise.  This has bothered me in every blog post I've put an emoji in.

1. Phoenix has gotten so big 😮 How did this happen?
2. Phoenix has gotten so big 😮. How did this happen?
3. Phoenix has gotten so big. 😮. How did this happen?

I mean, after writing out my options like this, I feel like #2 is the only way to go.