Out and About with Baby: Or, Congratulations Karin and Todd

Karin and Todd got married on Saturday, nine years after she got up the nerve to ask him to the prom. Having known both of them since I was tiny, Karin from school and Todd from the neighborhood, I was so excited when they started dating and especially when they announced their engagement. The wedding was beautiful and the reception was a blast, largely because I saw people that I'd lost contact with since high school and some good friends who I hadn't seen since my own wedding.

The table assignments were somewhat mind-boggling at first: Detroit Lions, Arizona Diamondbacks, Neil Diamond, zombies. Karin was kind enough to explain that Todd had come up with the theme: "Things That Are Awesome."


This was also a big weekend because attending Karin and Todd's wedding meant taking Harry on his first overnight visit. We went back to our hometown and stayed with Grandma. We visited with Kevin's family and left Harry with his parents while we went to the wedding, then stopped to grab the baby on the way to the reception.

I was nervous about what is normally almost a three-hour car trip with an infant, but he was quiet or slept almost the entire way, and once we added in two stops to nurse and one to change a diaper, the entire trip was about four hours. Kevin got very good at setting up Harry's playpen, and we discovered Harry's love of looking at himself in the mirror once we set up a diaper changing station on the bureau in Grandma's guest bedroom.

Harry was also really well behaved at the reception. We stuck around until Karin and Todd's first dance, which, appropriately for Baby Harrison, was George Harrison's "Got My Mind Set On You." My only complaint of the weekend is that the reception site, newly renovated in the past few years, I believe, has not one changing station. Harry's first diaper change of the evening occurred on a poor, unsuspecting employee's desk and then I took it upon myself to rearrange the flowers and soaps in one of the ladies' rooms until I had enough counter space to get the job done.