Yesterday was a day of many firsts for Miss Camille Grace. It was her first trip out-of-state. She felt her first raindrop. And we seem to have survived our first large public gathering. It was a good day.

Lee’s Great-Grandmother Mimi is celebrating her 100th birthday, so we went to Jacksonville for the big celebration. Cami finally got to meet her Uncle Dave, when he and Erin met us there. It was so good to see them.

Camille was a perfect angel. She slept the entire 2 and a half hour drive there. She slept through the entire party, despite being handed around from person to person. She slept all the way home. We saw her pretty blueberry eyes a few times during the day, but for the most part she napped.
I was very proud of her. I was standing in line to get hors d’oeuvres when a woman asked, “Is that your little baby?” (Erin was holding her at the time). I said yes. “She sure is beautiful,” the woman replied.
She was all dressed up in the same outfit she wore home from the hospital. It’s made of a lovely white fabric, and it survived three or four diaper changes unscathed!

The most difficult part of the whole adventure was watching people touch her and wondering if their hands were filthy. Our pediatrician recommended we wait until Cami was 6-8 weeks old before exposing her to germy crowds, but we didn’t want to miss this big event. I had hand sanitizer in the diaper bag, but as she was passed from person to person I didn’t want to constantly be running behind her waving the hand sanitizer around. So I sat in my seat and worried about it, wondering if I was a terrible mother for letting dirty hands touch my child. I nearly lost my composure when a cousin, about 9 years old, started playing with her hands and kissing her face. All I could think was, “School has started! He spends his days in a classroom full of germs! And he’s kissing my child!” But I didn’t want to freak him out by pouncing on him, screaming and flailing my arms and telling him to BACK AWAY FROM THE INFANT. I did ask him to use hand sanitizer, but it may have been too late. He’d already touched her hands. So, I did the next best thing – I put hand sanitizer on Camille’s hands. I don’t know if my doctor would recommend it, but it made me feel better momentarily.
We enjoyed showing her off immensely, and I know she enjoyed spending nearly every moment being held and cuddled. What a cutie.