I swear, every place I see in Poland is my new favorite city here. I knew Poland was picturesque from Instagram photos (no joke, I usually plan my trips using Instagram) but it is even better than I imagined.

Jon and I got to Wroclaw around 9:30am on Tuesday morning. We had taken a train from Krakow, which was pretty uneventful. Jon slept the whole time and I got stared at by a creepy guy who made me uncomfortable almost the entire time.

We were fortunate enough that our AirBnB host hadn’t had a guest the day before us, so we were able to check in early. We walked to our new studio that was literally right in the center of the Rynek (city center). I’m going to be honest in saying that I don’t remember what we did in nearly as much detail as I did about Krakow, but I think that’s because my mind wasn’t quite so blown with the food there.

But the town of Wroclaw! I thought Krakow was cute, but Wroclaw was adorable! Seriously! So freaking cute! The Rynek was literally a perfect square with a huge town hall in the middle and every building was perfect! Krakow has maintained a lot of the original buildings since it wasn’t ruined during the war, but the other cities in Poland were damaged and rebuilt. So although they were rebuilt to look the same, they are in much better condition overall. I think I took a thousand of the same picture in Wroclaw.

The morning we got to Wroclaw, we found Giselle on Yelp for brunch. The food was super good and I was so happy to have some eggs and a good coffee! The croissant was insanely good too. After breakfast, we had to head back to our studio to bundle up some more. Wroclaw was the coldest place we had been by far! I had on three pairs of pants, three long sleeved shirts, and two hats.

We walked over to Cathedral Island, which is usually an area in the towns with a huge cathedral. It was surprisingly not very busy in Wroclaw, so I got a lot of shots on my camera without many people. After walking around for awhile, we went back to our studio to warm up again. We have done this a lot of the days. Go out, eat, walk around, come back to relax for an hour or so, and then go back out for the evening. We went back out and found this amazing chocolate place right next door to us, E. Wedel Pijalnie Czekolady! Holy smokes, guys. This is literally the best hot chocolate I have had in my life. Ghirardelli is nothing compared to this. I had a sandwich for dinner there and then Jon and I went to the mall to get a scar for him (H&M wasn’t showing up on the map and the only scarves we found for men at the mall were like, $35. Turns out, an H&M was literally right across the square from our studio and we found a scarf there the next day for $4! Ugh!) We headed back to our room so it was cold and we were sleepy! I actually ended up taking Ambien since our room was kind of loud, so I slept like a baby.

Wednesday was our only other day in Wroclaw. We had a somewhat lazy start but I have no idea what we did in the morning. We walked around the town and eventually ended up going to Madame and I had a galetta (very similar to a crepe- like an open faced one). We sat looking out a window and it just reminded me how much I love Europe. I would love to explore some more continents (although I guess I’ve been to Asia and Australia, but I still want to go to more places) but I have such a love for Europe! The cafes are so amazing and their coffee is ten million times better than the US. I think I should have been born a European. I even got over my hatred for European breakfasts and I think I could give up my bagels now.

The rest of our day was spent walking around and going to E. Wedel’s for hot chocolate and dessert twice. We had dinner at Pod Fredra and it was decent, but nothing special. Maybe I filled up on dessert though, so I wasn’t that hungry. I don’t think either of us were really in the mood to be out to eat, so maybe that made it worse. The service was pretty good there though! Unfortunately, we didn’t tip on a pretty big bill because we were super confused about why there was a 23% VAT and an 8% VAT. We thought one was just the service tax, but now we think maybe alcohol has a different VAT. We literally cannot find anything online to decipher Polish restaurant receipts and only found that you usually tip 10-15% unless the service tax is added to the bill. (The bill that is written in Polish.) So, who knows if we’ve been tipping people properly or not. We have tipped like, 70% of the time, but we just don’t stress it if we don’t have cash or coins for it.

Also unfortunately, I somehow stepped in dog poop (maybe because people in Wroclaw just let their dogs poop all over, so it was right off the side of almost every sidewalk) and then it got on my scarf somehow. So now I’m wearing a scarf that is dirtied by dog poop. So gross.

We went back to our room to pack up and get ready to leave the next morning! The next day, we caught an early train to Poznan to spend a few hours there, before going to our final destination- Gdansk!

Again, slacking on photos because I’m tired and kind of in a hurry. Oh well.

Jon and I went to Auschwitz-Birkenau on Monday. We had planned on doing Auschwitz and the Weiliczka Salt Mines in one day, but realized that without a car, it didn’t seem very feasible from Krakow. Since neither of us were that into the Salt Mines, we decided to skip that (even though I’ve heard they’re incredible).

We ended up getting a later start than planned since the milk bar we wanted to go to in Krakow opened at 9am. Turns out, they were closed on Monday so we didn’t even get to go! We grabbed a quick bite to eat at some little cafe in town and then took a bus out to Oswiecim from the main bus station in Krakow (which is in the very back of the train station, also Galeria Krakowska, which is the mall that it is all connected to). The bus runs pretty frequently, so we only had to wait about 20 minutes before catching the bus (/large van) out there.

We didn’t get there until about 11am, and it is so strange because Auschwitz literally is backed up to residential areas on one side. Can you imagine? While there is no entrance fee, this affects the tourism services offered. Unless you are part of a tour (any group over 10 must do a tour and I don’t know how that works), you can’t get an audio tour via headphones. Most places I’ve been to offer that and we had really planned on doing that, so it was kind of a let down. We had to tour on our own just by reading, but you really need hours to do that. We had five hours total for both camps (Auschwitz and Birkenau are separate). I could have easily done 8 or 9 hours, but the only food available is at a snack stand outside of the main gate, so if you do allow that much time, take plenty of snacks and water.

Auschwitz is so well maintained. We went to Dachau, which was neat to see, but not nearly as impressive. You can enter into a ton of the barracks there. Most are set up more as museum sections with photographs and plaques. They had photographs of the prisoners of Auschwitz on the walls in quite a few of the barracks, and you know that so many more people were unpictured.

I’m not a very emotional person. Unless I actually have to see family members grieving over a loved one, I’m pretty distant from death (even with my own patients- if I never see a grieving family member, I am completely unbothered by having patients die). However, a few things managed to move me:

-In one of the barracks, there is typing on the walls of trains that arrived in Auschwitz, including the date, the number of persons on the train, and how many were gassed immediately. There were days in a row where over 900 people arrived to Auschwitz, and only 30-40 weren’t immediately gassed. 30-40! Within a 3-4 day period, over 3,000 Jews lost their lives.

-They have a lot of the belongings from prisoners displayed. Some of the clothes are hanging up or set up in an upright position. There were two outfits of toddlers. Obviously since I’m all soft after having my own child now, I just cannot imagine going through those times with a child. Jon and I actually discussed how being gassed at Auschwitz seemed like it would have been a relief after working labor intensive days in minimal clothing, with no shoes, in this frigid weather. We wondered why you would even want to live. The kids were killed immediately frequently since they served no purpose, and they were probably whisked away from the parents without them knowing where their child went. Maybe they hung onto hope that they’d see their kids again. Regardless, I can’t imagine how many little kids lost their lives and how many families were torn apart.

-One of the displays was human hair. After gassing the prisoners, their hair would be cut off before they were cremated. The hair was sold to textile mills, and forensics found human hair coated in Zyklon B (the gassing agent used) in the textiles sold during that time period. When the camp was liberated, sacks of hair were found waiting to be sold. That hair is now displayed and the amount of it is unreal.

We were getting short on daylight and knew we wanted to take the museum bus over to Birkenau. You can walk it, but we didn’t really have time. I wish we had allotted more time, because I felt really rushed through Auschwitz. There was so much stuff I still wanted to read. Also, a fun fact is that the “Arbeit Macht Frei” (Work Sets You Free) was stolen back in 2009 by Neo-Nazis. Apparently they were going to sell it and use the money for terrorism, but it was found two months later in the woods a few hours north. The sign now is not the original, but the original has been restored (it was cut into three pieces) and is supposed to go back on display.

Anyway, we took the bus out to Birkenau. This is where a lot of the famous photos are of the long building that the train goes through. While this camp was nowhere near as preserved at Auschwitz, it was massive. When you walk through the gate and look to the right, it seems never-ending. The wooden barracks were made to house 52 horses each, and instead ended up being used to hold 400 prisoners each. They each had a brick chimney and cement floors. Most of the barracks are no longer standing, but the railroad track remains and housing to the far side. We ended up not walking around as much, since our bus was coming back and we wanted to catch it, but I don’t believe any were set up as museum style. You could enter a few of the buildings, but they were all the same.

Upon trying to get back to Krakow, we realized we should not have bought a “return trip” in the morning on our bus. It was freezing cold and three other bus companies came first, but wouldn’t let us ride on their bus to Krakow since our return tickets were with another company. We had no idea that even existed since we just paid for a main public bus (we thought) in Krakow. Had we not paid ahead of time, we could have paid cash on the bus when we wanted to leave.

All in all, it was really shocking to see the place where over 1 million people lost their lives. It’s hard to imagine anybody living through those conditions, especially if they didn’t know where there family was. I have wanted to visit Auschwitz for as long as I can remember and it’s hard to believe I finally made it. It was more than I ever could have imagined. Since I am already loving Poland, coming here to visit Auschwitz is something that I think would be completely worthwhile.

I’m also glad we visited in the winter. I have heard that it is unbelievably crowded in the summer and Jon and I got stuck in a tour group when we were going through a basement to see where “prisoners” (you know, the actual bad ones who committed crimes, not just the ones who were prisoners because of being Jewish or Gypsies) were held and it was definitely way too packed in the tour groups to really enjoy taking your time. On the flip side, they probably got a lot more information than Jon and I did, so I guess you have to decide if you like getting more history, or if you like to move at your own pace. Even though it was cold and there wasn’t really any place to warm up, it was worth it us to visit Auschwitz-Birkenau in January and to not do a tour there.

Jon and I heard of people saying they needed to step outside because they were queasy at the sight of some things or that they needed something to lighten up after such a heavy day. Neither of us felt like that. It was definitely a moving experience overall and it was shocking to see, but it didn’t hit me that hard (but I didn’t expect it to). I am amazed that the extermination went on for so long without anybody realizing what was happening though. Two prisoners of Auschwitz escaped in 1945 and brought attention to what was happening in the camps, and after that, deportation slowed down (and then liberation happened). But for so many years, thousands upon thousands of people were being killed. The videos of Hitler and Goebbels in the late 30s and early 40s discussing their “Final Solution” plan and everybody saluting them leaves me speechless. How did an entire nation believe and support this? How did a man like Hitler ever become chancellor?

PS- This post would be way better with photos, but if you’re curious, just Google them 🙂 Haha. Sorry.

 

Hello! I’m actually updating since our nights here are ending fairly early and I’m caught up on schoolwork!

Thursday morning was spent with my bub, obviously! I kept Jackson home from daycare until about 10:30 so that we could get in some snuggles and quality time! Once I dropped him off, I was in packing mode and getting things done to leave by 12:30!

My dad took me to the airport to meet up with Jon (he had a layover in Atlanta from Charleston). We had a good four hours before we left, so we hung out at the airport until our plane left. I took Ambien for the flight and I don’t remember the beginning of the flight, but I wasn’t nearly as drowsy as normal. I forget how long 9 hour flights are! Thankfully, there was nobody in the seat next to me, so I sprawled out and cuddled with Jon while I napped off and on and watched movies.

We had a quick layover in Amsterdam and then an almost two hour flight to Warsaw.

Warsaw was a decent city. We had to take the train from the airport to Warsaw Glowny (the main train station), and then we walked around from there. We went into the Stare Miasto (old town), but it wasn’t really that exciting. Although the buildings are obviously older, it just wasn’t my style. We did eat a nice pierogie dinner out of the cold, but that didnt take long! We actually ended up catching an earlier train than we had planned to go to Krakow since we had seen enough and it was super cold that first day.

Our train ride was uneventful and I slept on Jon again (I woke up drooling all over myself- we were SO tired!). It took three hours to get from Warsaw to Krakow. We got to Krakow around 10pm and found our AirBnB easily. The apartment is big and very nice. Jon and I literally crashed as soon as we got in and slept like rocks!

We woke up around 7:30 yesterday and decided to go find breakfast. Breakfast is usually the hardest part of our day in foreign countries and we definitely went a super long way to the Stare Miasto, but we made it! We found a super small cafe that was tucked away and I had some Meusli and yogurt and a sandwich (which to them are just open faced sandwiches). We spent our day exploring the Stare Miasto. We actually came back to the apartment in the later afternoon for a little bit before heading out for dinner. We ate dinner at Guliwers. It was so good! We had a bruschetta plate that wasn’t actually traditional bruschetta, but oh my gosh. Best bruschetta ever! I had a chicken dinner and although I’m not a fan of curry and it totally had a curry taste, it was cooked so well. Once we finished that, Jon and I walked around a little more to see the town at night, and then came back to the apartment early.

We ended up staying up so late last night! Until 3am! Jon napped while I did schoolwork last night, so he wasn’t tired, and I got distracted researching vaccines. So instead of going to Auschwitz today, both of us hit snooze a thousand times and slept in this morning. We decided to go to the Jewish Quarter (Kazimierz) once we finally left!

We passed some awesome churches this morning. It totally blows my mind that people still go to these churches for services. They were massive! We finally were starving but hardly anything was open since it’s Sunday. We stopped by a small cafe, but they ended up not having food so Jon got coffee and we left.

As soon as we left, we headed towards the actual Kazimierz and saw a cafe that we had seen mentioned, Cafe Mlynek. Jon and I ordered so much food since the portions here have been fairly small. The portions ended up being HUGE! I ordered a sandwich and it was two actual whole sandwiches (literally the best sandwich I’ve ever had in a foreign country- delicious bread, mozzarella, sun-dried tomatoes, and basil pesto!), Jon got falafel and it was 13 falafel balls, and we got four huge pieces of bruschetta and three super large potato pancakes. We didn’t finish it. We also googled “common US customs” while we were there (we had been reading about Poland’s, but then we decided to see what google said about the US). It was so funny! And so accurate! Everybody should do that over a meal!

We walked around Kazimierz after that. So many of the buildings were just in terrible condition. Some of them have nets above the first floor to catch falling debris. The difference between Stare Miasto and Kazimierz was night and day. It actually makes me curious about the relationships between the Poles, Jews, and Germans.

Anyway, it didn’t take long to see that area (but maybe we were missing out on a lot, and a guided tour may have been nice, except I have a hard time understanding accents and am always too short and the sound gets blocked by everybody taller than me). We went back to Stare Miasto and walked around, and then settled on hot chocolate and crepes (called “pancakes” in Poland). We came back to the apartment to hang out for a bit, and then went back out for some dinner around 8pm.

We ate at Pod Gruszka for dinner. Their menu must change, since nothing mentioned on Yelp was actually offered there. I wasn’t in the mood for anything heavy, so I had a pear and parsley soup that I wasn’t holding high hopes for. Again, my mind was blown! It was honestly probably the best soup I’ve ever had. I want to try and make some now! Jon’s meal was good too! I like that there are so many options for healthy food here and it’s actually cooked so well. And despite eating such a gigantic lunch/breakfast, a chocolate crepe, and hot chocolate, I haven’t felt bloated at all since being here. I assume it probably has something to do with how much better the ingredients are here.

Jon and I are back in the apartment now. We’re going to Auschwitz tomorrow. I think we have to skip the Salt Mines since I heard it can be hard to fit into one day, and we want to have a nice slow morning and visit a milk bar for breakfast. So, we’ll probably get to Auschwitz around 10 or 11, and then when we get back to Krakow, we have a dinner place we want to try and a food truck to go to at 10pm that apparently serves the best sausages ever. We leave early on Tuesday to get to Wroclaw.

I’m not posting pictures on here because I’m too lazy, but if you follow me on Instagram or are friends with me on Facebook, I’ve been posting some. I haven’t been bringing my phone out much for pictures though! I’ve definitely been using the camera much more!

Alrighty, I better be off to bed! We have an early-ish morning tomorrow (not really- 8 am!)! I hope you all have a good night!

 

I need to go get some schoolwork done, but I figured I’d do a quick update since it’ll be a few weeks until my next one.

This past weekend was our cabin weekend with the girls! This will be the last cabin trip at my parent’s cabin since it’s been for sale for a few months. I doubt they’ll be hanging onto it still by next winter! We’ve owned the cabin for 11 years, so I have a lot of memories there! Tons of naps, books read, sitting on the porch… Lots of quality time, seeing as there is no TV and we try to stay off our phones while we’re there. It’ll be sad to see the cabin go for sure.

We got there late on Friday night since everybody had to work, and the cabin is about 2 hours north of downtown Atlanta (where all the girls were coming from). This was Laura’s first trip to the cabin, and Gina and Kassie came too, but they’ve been a bunch before. We hung out on Friday night before going to bed around 11pm.

Saturday morning, we all went in town for breakfast. I actually ran into my old college roommate and more recently, my old coworker, Shelby out there! It was so good to see her! The girls and I grabbed coffee at the local coffee shop and planned Kassie’s baby shower and talked about traveling. I swear, I got so lucky by finding a group of good friends that love to travel so much. And we’ve been friends forever, so it’s not like we found each other because of that common interest. We’ve just grown up that way! After coffee and planning, we headed out to walk around downtown and to check out a huge used book store.

We had to go back to the cabin to clean up since there was a 4pm showing, so we ran there to clean up and had planned on going to the park. The check in “house” for the cabin rentals (my parent’s cabin was a rental previously and is still in with a bunch of rentals, but the owners can choose if they want to rent or not, and my parents don’t rent theirs out) is also a winery. I had never been in there before since it never looks busy, but it was so nice out on Saturday and people were on the porch! So we decided to hit up the winery!

I never drink. But the wine was so good and I got so drunk. We talked about Trump (I’m the only semi-pro Trump person out of them, and I actually don’t like Trump, but I don’t really think “grabbing women by the pussy” disqualifies a candidate and I am glad to get away from lifelong politicians for a term) and race and other things that I probably should stay away from while drunk. It was a lot of fun though and it was even kind of nice to get unexpectedly drunk off two bottles of wine, haha. Too bad Kassie couldn’t drink with us!

We went out to get pizza after that and then headed back to the cabin, where we ate dinner, played games, and chilled.

Sunday morning, we got up and got ready fairly quickly. Jon had to fly back to Charleston (he stayed the weekend on a layover from Orlando, where he went last week for a regional meeting for work) at 3, so I was trying to get home to see him before he left. We stopped at Panera on the way back, and then I got home in time to take Jon to the airport.

I had really mild UTI symptoms all weekend long and my UTIs are normally awful. But with our upcoming trip, I decided to get get checked. I went to an urgent care and while I was there, I just became miserable in like, ten seconds flat. My back hurt so incredibly bad and I was so nauseous! Thankfully, I took an emesis bag from the urgent care because I threw up in my car on the way home. I took Tramadol once I got home and went and laid down. Thankfully, my mom is wonderful and took care of Jackson while I was miserable. WTF is wrong with me this last month?! I had hand, foot, and mouth and now a UTI?! I hope things improve by Poland!

I need to get going now! I’m trying to get my schoolwork mostly done since we leave for Poland on THURSDAY! I really want to keep Jackson home on Thursday morning, but Jon lands in Atlanta around 1 so I’m going to the airport early. Jon wants to pack in a bag that I have here, so we have some stuff to do once he lands before I go into the airport with him. I am going to miss my boy so much!

Look at that face! He has no lips, just like Jon. And he started toddling around! He took 9 steps the other night, but then he barely walked at all yesterday. He’s getting there though! I wish you could see his hair curls there, but he has curls right above both ears and right on the top of his head. It’s so cute. I get so excited to see his little face and to hang out with him now! 10 days is going to be too long without him!

After we get back from Poland, Jackson and I officially go out to Charleston! I’m super excited to have our family under one roof! It’ll be busy though, since I feel like our weekend are already filling up for February, March, and April and I kind of just want to time for us to be a family in our new city!

Alrighty, I have to go get some homework done! I only have two days to get everything done for our trip!

What a wonderful weekend! I have had this whole weekend off, and I still have next weekend and the following two weekends off work! I don’t know how I worked so many weekends in a row (probably because I never worked two back-to-back twelve hour shifts lately because I hate it) lately, but this is so freeing to be off for so many weekends!

Friday we had a “snow storm” in Atlanta. I was working during the day, but thankfully, the weather deterred people from really coming to the ER. We still were steady all day, but never crazy. And I had good assignments all day long.

When I got home from work (still clear weather!), Jon was here to greet me! He got home early and it was nice to be home to my husband! I don’t even remember if we did anything on Friday night. I think maybe we went to eat? No idea. Maybe we just hung out at home? Doesn’t matter.

Saturday morning was a snowy one, so we hung out and had pajama Saturday with Jackson. But then we decided to venture out, so my mom hung out at home with Jackson while Jon and I went to REI to try to get the last of our Poland gear. We stopped at Honeybaked Ham for lunch since I’ve been craving their ham since Thanksgiving and it was so good! Then we headed over to REI, where we bought a few things (another thick pair of socks and a Smartwool shirt for me- I LOVE Smartwool, but they are way too expensive) that’ll be nice to keep us warm.

After we put Jackson to bed, Jon and I decided to head to the outlet mall in Woodstock for Ghirardelli hot chocolate. It’s a drive to get out there, but it’s the best hot chocolate ever! Unfortunately, everything was closed because of the weather. We found a coffee shop on Yelp and went to downtown Woodstock, but that was closed too! The only thing open was a cigar bar, so Jon and I decided to head in there.

Aside from the horrible stench of cigars (I have been to cigar bars that are really well ventilated- this was not one of them), it was actually kind of fun. Jon hasn’t smoked cigars in awhile, but it was pretty laid back and I have a feeling most of the people in there were regulars. Besides, sometimes it’s nice to just do something unexpected, especially since life with babies is pretty predictable.

Sunday morning we were having brunch at Rachel’s with her and her husband and baby, Kassie and Billy, and Gina and Brian. Now that it’s officially announced, the pregnant one is Kassie! I think she’s 18 weeks now with a little girl! So much fun! I can’t wait until she has her! Brunch was a lot of fun! We had originally talked about going out for brunch, but in response to a question, I mentioned that Jackson is pretty difficult to take out to eat right now. We decided on a potluck brunch at Rachel’s since it would be easier, and it definitely was! Their daughter is 6 months old and Jackson had plenty of her toys to keep him occupied! It’s still hard to focus on the adult conversation with a little person distracting you, but it was so much easier being there than a restaurant. At the end of our brunch, Kassie mentioned that she could see why we opted for an in-home brunch instead, after she saw how rambunctious Jackson is these days!

Rachel, me, Gina, Kassie.

Once we got home from brunch, I went to meet up with Laura. We ran to Target for a new steamer pot (I may have burnt that pot at my parent’s house because I forgot it was on the stove… oops), then had some dinner at Atlanta Bread Company, followed by hot chocolate at Starbuck’s.

Jon decided to stay in Atlanta last night since he doesn’t have any cases in Charleston, so we got to hang out all night too! We have been getting along wonderfully lately and I really have enjoyed our time together, so I was really happy that he was home Jon and I watched The Fundamentals of Caring on Netflix, which was a cute movie. I was in the movie for something funny and light and it was good for that! I’d recommend it.

Jon and Jackson before daycare today.

I took Jackson to daycare this morning and had breakfast at home with Jon. He just left and now I need to run to Whole Foods and then start on schoolwork. I’m getting my hair colored this afternoon, even though I always second guess if I really want it dyed again. Part of me just wants to let my hair grow out completely to my natural color, but I just never do. Today is the first day of our semester, so I’ll be working super hard to get ahead in the short time we have before we leave for Poland!

Speaking of Poland, everything is booked! I’m super excited to get there! It’s going to be a blast! Super cold, but definitely fun! I’m going to miss my little squishy boy so much though, but it will be much needed to spend some quality time with Jon! Especially since he will be in Savannah so much over the next few months. I can’t believe we leave NEXT THURSDAY! And I’m already ready to start planning my next trip!

Alrighty, time to head out to be a productive adult!

I should be going to bed in a few minutes since I’m going to Charleston tomorrow, but I’m not that tired somehow! I should also be booking out hotels for Poland because we leave in 16 days, but I’m also not doing that. I actually was walking out the door this morning to go to a coffee shop and book all of our AirBnBs and then I got called into work at the very last minute, so my plans went out the door.

Jon came in town this weekend which was nice! Unfortunately, I had to head into work on Saturday and Sunday from 9-3. We did go grab a bite to eat on Friday night but I was feeling kind of gross, so we just came back to the house and watched Captive on Netflix.

On Saturday, I went to meet up with Gina after work down by our old condo (I still miss living down there!) for some coffee. I really feel like I haven’t spent nearly enough time with friends lately, although I think that’s just what happens as we get older and our lives change. Jon and I talked about going out for NYE to do something fun, but we didn’t. Instead, we went to grab some pizza and watched some more Captive in bed.

I got home from work Sunday and Jon had gone out with Andrew without telling me, so I was a little surprised to find my parents watching Jackson (they offered, but hello, let your wife know!). I had been wanting to go to the Botanical Gardens that night, but Jon didn’t get home until right before Jackson went to bed, and then I laid down on the couch and was too lazy to get up and get dressed to go. So, another night watching Captive at home!

Monday we headed down to the North Face store. I bought some new snow boots and a new winter jacket. I’m really not sure what happened in the last five years, but I’m pretty sure the North Face has almost tripled in price. I’m letting it slide since the last time I bought a winter jacket and boots was before I went to China (I think that was in 2011) and I love their jackets, but really? I’m kicking myself too, because last year I found an awesome winter jacket for $70 on clearance and told myself I didn’t need to buy it since I wanted to save money! I should have just invested back then. Other than needing a few base layers now, I’m pretty much set for Poland! I want to get maybe 1 or 2 more wool shirts. I haven’t been in cold weather in awhile, so I have a feeling Poland winters are going to be a little shocking for this Southern girl.

Gina came over Monday afternoon to hang out with Jackson. I feel kind of bad because hanging out with Jackson isn’t really anything exciting. Not only that, he was super clingy. I think he gets clingy when he wakes up from naps to strangers, but we did give him a bath and he was super happy then. But I’m just not sure it’s what people expect when they come to hang out, and we’re really just feeding him dinner and doing baths. That Mom Life isn’t really glamorous and fun, but it was still nice to have some company!

I already mentioned that I was called in today. When I buckled J into his carseat, I noticed he sprouted a new tooth! I have been expecting it since he was teething a few weeks ago really bad so I knew it had to be coming! He has his 7th tooth! If it’s anything like his last teeth, then the one on the other side should be coming in soon too.

I hung out with my boy tonight and made some Paleo pumpkin muffins for him. I just finished pumping and catching up on some trash TV, and now I need to pack real quick. I’m heading to Charleston tomorrow after I drop J off at daycare so I can pack for Poland. I don’t think I need much, but it’s easier to just go there myself rather than have Jon dig out all of my stuff, especially since I don’t even know where I put everything. I wish I could stay longer, but since my parents will be watching Jackson for 10 whole days soon, I don’t really want to leave him here longer than I need.

Jon and I are planning on having a date night in Charleston though since we’ll be childless! I should get there around two tomorrow and Jon has a later case, so I think I’m going to head downtown to do some solo exploring when I get there. And then we’ll go back downtown at night. Tomorrow is a high of 67 there, so I’ll just have to swing by and pick up my shorts at the house, haha. I’m sure I’ll sleep in a little on Thursday morning, but then I’m heading back to pick Jackson up in the afternoon from daycare. I’m going to miss my little bubby! He is just so much fun right now and I actually like spending time with him these days, so I definitely miss him! But it’ll be nice to have a whole night for just the two old married people! We’ll probably be in bed by 9, haha.

I work on Friday from 9-7, and then Jon comes back this weekend. He has a regional meeting on Monday in Atlanta, so he gets to stay here all day on Sunday too! I’m even off work this weekend! So I’m pretty excited for an entire weekend as a family without having to work at all! I’m so anxious to get back to Charleston and just start our life for a little while. I know it’ll be temporary since we’ll be right back in this situation in September, but I’m trying not to think about it! It’s only been three weeks of being here without Jon and it already feels like way too long, so I can’t imagine eight months of this! Hopefully by September, it’ll be easier to go back and forth with Jackson!

Now I’m rambling. Better go pack for tomorrow! I honestly wouldn’t even bother taking anything, but since we are going to do a date night, I figure I should at least get some stuff together. Or maybe I’ll just shower in the morning and just throw my make up in a bag. I have clothes to wear there. Who knows.

Oh, last bit of good news- MY OLD BRAS FIT AGAIN! Honestly, that alone gives me more motivation to get back in shape and dye my godforsaken hair and to just put a little more effort into my appearance. I just felt so frumpy with such big boobs, and none of my clothes fit and I just didn’t care to make an effort. Nursing bras don’t have any lift to them since your boobs can literally triple in size in the same bra, so my boobs were just taking up my whole front and falling towards my arms and just not cute. The fact that I have my little boobs back and they’re lifted and where they should be just makes me feel much more back to normal and not so gross. And I can fit into my clothes again which is so nice, so I can stop wearing only v-necks all the time! I put jeans on to go out to eat on Saturday and my mom even commented on the fact that I was in jeans. It was the first time I’ve worn anything other than leggings in over 3 weeks since I’ve been here.

Alright, good night guys!