Emily's first wedding: a series of unfortunate events (or the longest post in this blog's history)

This weekend, we had a wedding to attend on the coast, and Emily was invited, too! So we decided to head down to Biloxi on Friday afternoon, have a tasty dinner on the coast (fresh seafood!), spend the night at the Beau Rivage, relax, enjoy ourselves, and head back to Jackson after the wedding Saturday afternoon. The wedding was really lovely, the bride was beautiful, etc., but our trip was, well, sort of a disaster.

We didn't get out of town nearly as early as we'd hoped: we didn't pull out of Jackson until about 6. So we were starved by the time we got to Hattiesburg and decided to just eat there. It's been a while since I ate at Chesterfield's! It was close to 10 by the time we got to the hotel, and check-in took forever, and then it took forever for the bellhop to get us our bags. (Emily was asleep in her carseat, and so Robert and I basically stared at each other in a darkened, quiet hotel room for ten minutes waiting for the bags to arrive so we could set up the pack 'n' play, etc.) Luckily, Emily stayed asleep even through the unpacking that followed, so we put her in her crib fully dressed in the day's playclothes, and I got ready for bed. Robert really wanted to check out the casino and try to win some money (after all, Papa needs a new putter or driver or something) at the blackjack table, so he headed down to the casino while we went to bed. On his way out the door, he told me he had his cell phone and blackberry, so I could call him if I needed to. From past experience, I figured he wouldn't have any cell service in the casino, so I told him I probably wouldn't be able to call him even if I needed to.

The night went better than expected, sleep-wise, and Robert broke even downstairs. Unbeknownst to me, he sent me an email while down there. The title of the email was "I love you" and the body said something about how he had great cell service so I could call him if I needed him. Of course, being asleep, I didn't check my blackberry.

Saturday morning, we got up and headed downstairs hoping to make up for the fact that we didn't get the dinner we were planning on by pigging out at the breakfast buffet. But it wasn't open -- it wouldn't open for another 45 minutes, and we didn't have that kind of time to kill, so we ended up eating at some other restaurant in the hotel, which wasn't at all what we were hoping for.

So, after a disappointing breakfast, we headed upstairs to get ready. And we soon discovered that we were running late. While I was bathing Emily (because we didn't get to bathe her Friday night because she was sleeping when we arrived), Robert discovered that I brought the wrong suit. He gave me instructions on what to pack, and while I packed a blue Austin Reed suit, it was not the one that matched the tie I brought (the tie he requested), nor was it a suit that currently fits. I'm not sure how many sizes ago the suit was, but let's just say it was snug and didn't, apparently, match the tie we had (not that I could tell). So I suggested that he go downstairs and see if he could buy a tie that matched better, but it soon became apparent that we didn't have time for that, or for us to check out the fancy jewelry store as we had hoped to. In fact, we headed downstairs ten minutes later than planned, and then had to wait what seemed like forever for our car to appear from valet parking and for our luggage to appear from the bell service.

The car and luggage eventually arrived, and we had a short amount of time to make it to the wedding in Pascagoula. Zooming down the highway, a rock flew up and nicked my otherwise nick-less windshield, directly in the driver's line of vision. Awesome. On the ride, I remembered that Robert told me that he had sent me an email the night before, so I pulled out my blackberry; there was no message from him. He handed me his blackberry to send an email to someone for me while he drove, and that's when I noticed that the "I love you" email intended for me was actually sent, in the middle of the night from the casino floor, to a lawyer Robert works with in Atlanta whose first name is Daniel. DOUBLE AWESOME. So Robert immediately tried to do some damage control, leaving an explanatory email and voicemail for this guy who will have woken up to an email from my husband professing his love.

We made it to the church on time, barely, and the wedding was really lovely. On the way out the church, I wondered out loud if we should change Emily's diaper at the church before leaving for the reception, which was in Mobile, some 30 or so minutes away, just to be safe, but we decided to just head out; she wasn't complaining about a wet diaper or anything.

As we were pulling off the highway in Mobile, trying to merge off the off-ramp, we got rear-ended. No major damage, but we had to pull over and exchange info with this nice lady, and it was starting to become clear that Emily (1) needed a diaper change and (2) would need lunch soon.

So, we got to the reception and I immediately headed for the ladies' room. No changing table. So I changed what turned out to be a very wet and sorta poopey diaper on the floor of the bathroom in my cocktail dress wearing heels. And this was one of those diaper changes where you have to take off her shoes, bloomers, and tights before getting to the diaper. Good times.

We were at the reception for about 10 minutes when we realized we needed to get out of there so we could feed the beast; it was after 1 and Emily needed lunch, bad. So, without having said hello to the bride and groom, and having added about an hour and a half to our total drive time by leaving Pascagoula to go to Mobile for a ten minute reception, we hit the road. But not before Daniel, he of the misaddressed email, called Robert to tell him, "I love you, too, man." I'm pretty sure that's not the last Robert is going to hear of that email.

We eventually made it to a Wendy's outside of Mobile where we fed Emily and had a light snack ourselves, Robert fixed Emily a couple of bottles for the road with warm tap water from the men's room (nice), and we attempted to change Emily's clothes and diaper for the ride home. Of course, there was no changing table, and while I'll kneel on the floor of a bathroom at a fancy reception hall to change a diaper, I draw the line at a Wendy's bathroom. So we had an awkward diaper and wardrobe change in the back seat of the SUV (the one with a nick in the windshield and a dent in the back bumper) ("Where's the Desitin? I lost the Desitin!"), and finally, blessedly, headed home, where Emily's grandparents were waiting to babysit so Robert and I could have what turned out to be a much-needed dinner date.

I've put a moratorium on travel until February.

We did take one picture of Emily in her sweet dress for the wedding.

Pretty girl. Here she is looking cute before we left for Biloxi Friday afternoon; this is the outfit she slept in Friday night.

In other news, she likes standing up by the coffee table, for a few seconds at a time, to reach for items like the remote control.She has also begun to babble some: she's mastered ya-ya-ya, ga-ga-ga, and da-da-da. You can see a little of that in this video I took on the drive home from Mobile Saturday morning.

She really wants to crawl, which you can kind of see in this video. No charge for the little spit-up goatee she gets midway through the video.

Oh, and she seems to be on the mend from the ear infection; last night she even returned to her fabulous pre-illness sleep schedule, and was asleep from 8 until 7:30 or so this morning. (Knock on wood.)

I've been meaning to take a picture of this to post but keep forgetting: I had Emily's hand- and foot-prints made in November and picked them up right before Christmas; they made great Christmas gifts, and we kept one for ourselves. I want to have them done every year for a little while so we can see the little hand and foot as it grows.Okay, I'm exhausted. Happy Monday, and may the next wedding you attend be filled with far fewer antics than this one.