Henry's Religious Extravaganza

Henry, Alli and Alli's best friend Jessi.

Henry and Jessi get acquainted. 

Henry gets ready for Easter with Grandma Sally. 

Henry and his Uncle Gil during Passover seder. 

In the Machlis family, we like our mixed faith holidays close together and with lots of food. Henry and I recently visited Idaho for Passover seder and Easter. We got to see great grandparents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and old friends, and enjoyed every minute of it (except for the ear infection and going through security at the airport)!

Flying solo with an infant was an experience for me. Henry was really well behaved again, but he's less interested in sleeping than when we last flew on an airplane. He spent every flight (2 on each leg of our trip) wide awake, bouncing up and down on my lap and invading the personal space of the person sitting next to us. Strangely, we were seated next to teenage boys on both long flights--- the only portion of the population capable of ignoring a giggling infant for four hours. Henry made his best effort to snatch away the iphones, ipods, and comic books distracting those kids from entertaining him, but only succeeded in getting a few half-smiles. He did, however, wow those boys' moms, who fondly reminisced with me about their own sons' poopy diapers and drool, which I'm sure was appreciated by their children. Logistically, it's pretty difficult to carry a 6 month old baby and his luggage around an airport, and impossible to manage it through security when you're asked to put his diaper cream and pureed veggies in a clear plastic bag and take off your shoes. Thankfully there were lots of nice strangers who offered to help us, though I was wary of the baby-snatching grannies who volunteered to hold Henry and gave them my backpack instead. With lots of help, we made it from Urbana to Idaho and back again, and I'm so glad we made the trip. Our weekend was filled with family visiting and we felt so loved.