Whew. What a trip.
Our vacation in Maine included a wedding, a baby shower, a birthday dinner, four different stays with three different friends/relatives, and a madcap day of Kingfield Days festivities. Could we have crammed more into our trip? Sure. Would we have survived? Doubtful.
There are some cardinal rules for vacationing with an infant, and I think we broke nearly every one. The first: travel light. Tibetan sherpas have trekked up Mt. Everest with less gear than we took north. Stroller? Check. Car seat? Check. Pack-n-play? Check. Add two suitcases, an overnight bag and a diaper bag, and you can see why the time spent checking our bags caused flight delays up and down the East Coast.
Kasper turned out to be as good at air travel as he is in the car: he fell asleep before takeoff, flirted with the flight attendant before deplaning and did not try to disarm the lavatory smoke detector. We couldn't have been prouder.
Our first stop in Maine was a small dinner party with some of Meaghan's friends, including his buddy Paul, who is a couple months older than Kasper but is light-years ahead in the hair-growing department. Grandpa and Mema — that's Grandma Rynne's alter-ego — were also vacationing in Maine and had a chance to lavish love and a new wardrobe on the boy.
We spent that night with Chris and Becky and lounged the next day by their pool, the unofficial northern HQ of the Kasper Fan Club. They can't get enough of the kid. Kasper loves Uncle Chris' funny faces and noises (I'll pass on that joke; too easy). 
The next three nights were spent in the newly-redone upstairs bedroom at my parents' house in Kingfield. Then it was back to Minot for a night before staying in Portland with friends Amy and Blaine. After hauling that damn Pack-n-Play up and down the Western Maine corridor and setting it up five times, I realized we'd broken Rule No. 2: let the relatives come to you.
But Kingfield is hard to resist —— and when it's Kingfield Festival Days, it's simply impossible. We took in the Quilt Show —— my Aunt Ruth's entries were amazing; she must have been quilting like a woman possessed the past 12 months —— and scored some free hot dogs. And everywhere we went, Kasper's rep preceded him. Apparently, his Grammie puts his picture on her computer desktop at the elementary school each time I post one. So six months in, he's already conquered Kingfield. Next up, the world.
Being at Grammie and Grampy's was a special treat for Kasper, since they share his penchant for getting up at the crack of dawn. And he and his Grampy both love afternoon naps and funny hats. They certainly never lacked for things to jabber on about.
We also saw the Stanley kids — growing like weeds, I'm happy to report —— and Adam's daughter Hannah, who at 4 has become quite the little conversationalist. She told us she liked Kasper's "soft skin and his little baby toes." What a cutie.
Adam's second daughter is due next month; he and wife Michelle were showered with gifts on Saturday. When she arrives, she'll no doubt be cute and super-clean; they must have gotten a dozen bath towels in the boatload of gifts they took home.
Our return flight Tuesday was equally smooth, until I went to get the car at Dulles and found out the remote for the car alarm died on the trip. It took two shuttle trips and a few hours of sitting in the airport before we got in touch with the dealership and learned how to activate the manual override, i.e., push the mysterious black button we'd never found a use for.
And that's it. We're back home now. Our families still far away, and that's still no fun, but we got to see a lot of them and that helps. Kasper seemed to like Maine — I guess it's in his blood — and he really loved meeting all his cousins. Next time we visit he'll be able to run and play with all of them. We can't wait. And I've already made a list of all the things we're not going to pack.
Kasper and I met a very nice man during our train trip to Fayetteville. A fine Southern gentleman, wearing a suit on a Saturday afternoon, who remarked, "Your boy really favors you, ma'am. I know right away he who he belonged to." And the girls in my store, they say all the time how Kasper looks like me.
