Visiting Indiana
December 1st, 2007
It was two weeks ago now that we hopped on an Amtrak train in the middle of Kansas at the bright and early hour of 3AM, bound for Indiana.
This has been our third trip with Jacob. He’s 14 months old now. We never really enjoyed long car or airplane trips before we had a baby, and haven’t really had the desire to try a long car trip since. So we try to take the train, or if time is short, fly.
Jacob enjoys the train. There’s lots to see and do. The one thing he doesn’t like doing is waiting for food to arrive in any situation, so when we have sit-down meals in the diner, things can get challenging.
We arrived in Indiana the same evening and spent a few days with Terah’s dad out at the farm.
Jacob enjoyed grandpa and grandma:
Jacob got his first ever ice cream there. Despite the concerned “unknown food alert” look, he opened up quick for another bite.
The big hit of the visit there were chickens. I’ve never seen Jacob so thrilled about watching something before. He was so excited he was just moving his arms all around, almost jumping up and down. Here he is watching them:
Terah wants us to get chickens now. Just because we still have a chicken house left…
On Tuesday, we went north to spend a few days with Terah’s mom. On the way up, it became overcast. Terah’s mom calls it the winter “permacloud”, which is the best description of it I’ve heard yet. I didn’t believe Terah at first when she said that they don’t see the sun for 3 months in winter up there, but I believe her now.
Jacob found a rocking chair just his size there, and was able to make it rock. But the big hit of this stop were refrigerator magnets, at Jacob height.
He spent a long time with them, and got pretty good at working with them, too.
He also thought he ought to check out the camera in great detail. So of course, the camera checked him out.
Terah’s mom wanted to spend some time with Jacob, so on Wednesday, Terah and I headed up to Niles, MI to visit some antique shops. We found some postcards from small towns in Kansas dating back to the 1930s, an old metal fan (still works), a wooden “apothecary box” with pull-out drawers, and some furniture we might have purchased if we were closer to home.
For the first time ever, Terah was the first one to say “aren’t you done shopping yet?” She was getting tired, so we started heading back. Magically her energy returned as we approached the road leading to the South Bend Chocolate Co. factory and retail store, so we headed in that direction. The next tours didn’t start for almost an hour, so we bought some chocolate, looked around a bit, and then left.
Terah’s mom had a good time with Jacob while we were gone.
Thursday was the O’Connor Thanksgiving. Terah’s grandma and some other relatives were there. Here’s Jacob with his great grandma:
Jacob enjoyed Thanksgiving dinner, and managed to keep finding things to munch on all afternoon.
That evening, we went over to Terah’s Yoder grandparents and spent a few days there. Not long after we arrived, Terah’s uncle showed up and brought his adopted greyhound with him. Jacob was very excited about this, though the dog wasn’t so sure about Jacob.
Eventually the greyhound calmed down and Jacob got to see him up close and pet him. Jacob didn’t even mind getting his whole face licked.
The next morning at breakfast, Terah’s grandma had set out the high chair that she used as a girl for Jacob to eat in. I got some pictures, but Jacob was far more interested in asking to have food ready to eat.
Here’s Jacob with his Yoder great grandparents:
Later Friday, it was the Yoder Thanksgiving. Jacob got plenty of attention. He also was looking VERY CAREFULLY for Waldo.
Jacob wasn’t feeling the best all week, but despite having a busy week and feeling not so good, he did really well. He has been walking with help now, holding on to one adult finger with each hand. He really enjoys that, but is short enough that adults have to bend over a bit to help him. I imagine several people had sore backs after the week was over, including us.
On the train trip home, I took him to the lounge car to go walking. Usually he likes to walk as fast as he can for as long as he can, but there he would only go a little bit at a time. He’d stop at each group of chairs to look at the people, and most of them were really happy to see him, too. After he was done with the lounge car, we walked back through the coaches to our seat. As long as he kept walking, he again would stop at each row of seats to make friends with anybody that wanted to.
We tried to find a nice place to go for lunch during our layover in Chicago. But let me tell you, downtown Chicago — at least the part near Union Station — is dead on Sunday and the fact that it was just after Thanksgiving probably didn’t help. We wound up finding a place in Union Station to eat. Jacob fussed for awhile, then went to sleep on my lap (he rarely manages to go to sleep while being held). Then on our connecting train back to Kansas.
It was a fun and busy week, but it’s nice to be home too. Our train arrived in Kansas at 3:15AM Monday morning. So we went home to catch a few more hours sleep before going to work. As I went outside that morning, we had a gorgeous Kansas sunrise. As the sun was coming up, it was lighting the underside of the clouds with a vibrant deep red and orange color. The whole sky to the east was lit up like that, and felt so warm and inviting on a bitterly cold morning.
Way to make me smile, John. You hit both South Bend and KS; two of my three homes. As someone who grew up in Newton, I must say that I do miss the Kansas sunsets/sunrises. Some of the most beautiful skies are out there.
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Thanks for the recap, John. It was wonderful having you here.
BTW: Freddy the cat returned from his roaming the day after you left. He left for a few days again when the in-laws came for a day. Now he is back…trying to adjust to our decision to add a kitten to our homestead to compensate for his wandering ways. We think he might not appreciate outside incursions into his space =)
See ya in a couple weeks!
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