Cold Mountain in November

I think that we are all finally feeling mostly better.  Eliot did not cough one time last night, so I think he has officially beaten croup!  This all lasted for almost two whole weeks.  Goodness!  And I thought I felt cooped up last Sunday!

Everything has been piling up in the process of trying to get better.  I completed all of my school work ahead of schedule so I knew I wouldn't be frying my brain at the last minute, but the constant stream of emails became overwhelming.  I have a system for student emails.  Answer it right away.  If I can't because it is complex, mark it unread and do it within the hour.  Instead, I found myself shifting through to find "easy" ones that I could get to immediately, but saving the harder ones for when, you know, the room wasn't spinning and Eliot wasn't being needy and I wasn't simply starving.  Those moments were hard to come by.  I get a lot of work done at night when Eliot is asleep.  In this case with croup, he needed a lot of help during the night, so that was impossible.  I think everything is completely sorted out and caught up, though, and no one went 24 hours without a response.  I just try to usually keep the responding process more immediate even though I actually am permitted 48 hours.

All that to say that I have been kind of stressed (ha) and that today we did something fun.  The weather was trying to trick us out of November, so we grabbed sandwiches for lunch at Magnolia and headed to the mountains.  Cold Mountain!  Chris mentioned doing McAfee's Knob, but I reminded him that it would be eight miles total out and back with about 25 pounds on his back (baby and carrier).  He conceded and Cold Mountain it was.

I don't know how some people can live without mountains.  There is something about them that takes away the worries.

The last time we were there, I was fifteen weeks pregnant with Eliot.  It was fun to sit on the same rock with my boy trying to climb away and explore.  I joke that my trail name is Weak Ankles.  We called our dog (Abed-nego) Sure Foot because he takes care in deciding where he steps.  I need Eliot to earn such a name before I let him go scooting down a giant boulder!  And the ability to walk might be helpful too.  However, when we set him on the ground to let him crawl and explore, he took off for that rock and proceeded to attempt to climb up it.  You can't pose photos like this one (below) with a now ten-month-old.  He is too good!  I love how adventurous he is.  He is such a boy.

And just for fun, here I am back in July 2010 with Eliot-boy on the inside and then today.

More photos from today