Home Sweet Home (Again)

Well, we're home.



It's amazing how much of a difference the familiarity of home makes. Your own bed, your own spot on the couch, your own bathroom...everything. It sure is nice to be home. That's not to say we didn't enjoy spending time with Grandma and Grandpa Bieganowski and their wonderful hospitality, but there's something to be said for being home.



We'll try and make this post a recap of the trip as a whole, since you all already know what Dr. Ghosh said from the previous post.



We left our home in Lenexa last Friday night at about 9:00pm. We were hoping that Kylie would sleep in the car, making the 14-hour drive to northeast Ohio a little more managable.



No so much.



She slept maybe two hours once we got outside of the KC area. I'm fairly certain she was awake somewhere around Columbia, MO. Huge thanks to my coworker Bobbie who lent us the portable DVD player. Second big thanks to the folks that created Yo Gabba Gabba. That kept Kylie's focus off of screaming for a while.



The fact that she wouldn't sleep and the fact that I couldn't sleep (driving) forced us to pull over in Terre Haute, IN. We found a lovely Days Inn around 3;30am (4:30 local time, they're still CST, but don't do daylight savings) and crashed for a few hours. Oh, and by lovely, I mean scary. Of course, Kylie wanted nothing to do with sleeping, so she ran around the room making a bunch of noise and tearing up tissues. You know how some hotels have the tissue box on the "face" of the vanity? Well, Kylie found them. When I woke up three hours later, Kylie was asleep in the bed next to me with Mom and there were 20 tissues on the floor. Only, there weren't 20 tissues on the floor. There were hundreds of tissue scraps and shards on the floor. The carcasses of 20 tissues. At least she had fun! There's a picture of that mess in the slide show.



We thankfully departed the scary Days Inn around 9:30 local time and drove the rest of the way to Lordstown, OH. With Yo Gabba Gabba playing on a loop in the backseat (and Mommy going crazy watching and listening to it) Kylie did an amazing job as a member of the road trip team. We occasionally stopped for gas and food, making it to our destination around 4:45 in the evening.



We stayed with Jody's parents while there (they are only an hour or so from Cleveland). Once Kylie overcame the "new person" fear, she really warmed up to both Grandma and Grandpa Bieganowski, as well as Uncle Joey.



Once we got in the door, Kylie met Abbie, the resident princess. Abbie is a Teacup Yorkie that has more toys and clothes than a Wal-Mart. Kylie, even with just a little bit of sleep, just lit up when she saw the dog. Throughout the few days we were there, Kylie would chase Abbie around with a gigantic grin plastered across her face. I'm sure that dog is sleeping well now that her little buddy isn't there to chase her.



Saturday night was pretty rough. Kylie hadn't slept more than a couple hours the night before and didn't do too well at napping in the car either. So, she woke up a few times all out of sorts - mostly due to the lack of sleep, but I'm sure the new surroundings had a lot to do with it too. That wasn't fun.



Sunday and Monday had us just relaxing - we didn't do anything more exciting than a trip to Wal-Mart, but it was a welcome break after not sleeping much the previous couple of nights. A result of that Wal-Mart trip was a super cool pony, a big teddy bear and some PJs from Grandma and Grandpa B for Kylie. The pony is one of those ride-on jobs that plays music and everything. She's not really a fan of riding it, but she likes to push the music button, put toys in the basket and push it around.



We woke up on Tuesday and drove up to Cleveland. The directions from Google maps said 1 hr, 4 min. I wanted to leave about 7:30 to make sure we had plenty of time. Well, I overslept so we didn't leave until a few minutes after 8:00. Still no problem for a 9:40 appointment, right?



Wrong.



Google maps took us through a not so lovely part of Cleveland. It kind of reminded us of the Days Inn we'd stayed at a few nights prior. Somehow, the 10 miles from the highway to the hospital took us FOREVER. Stoplights, stop signs, pedestrians, bus stops, you name it, we encountered it. We arrived about 10 minutes late to our appointment. Oops.



We've already gone over the appointment itself, so we'll make this part quick. First, the Cleveland Clinic is huge! For those folks in KC, picture the Sprint campus. Navigating around to find parking, then the right building, then the right elevators can be a very daunting task. Luckily, we had some good directions and didn't have much trouble once we found a place to park.



Everyone there was very nice and accomodating. We've already talked about Dr. Ghosh, but he was great. Took a lot of time going over everything with us and even stopped and talked with us in the hall for a few minutes after the appointment.



We had lunch there at the hospital while waiting for Dr. Ghosh to get everything all typed up and printed. I don't know that I can stress enough how crazy this place was. Walking down from the clinic to the cafeteria, there are people everywhere. Picture the mall around Christmas!



Once we'd met with Dr. Ghosh again we were back on our way. Kylie did a great job on the drive back to Lordstown, just as she'd done from Lordstown to Cleveland. Back with Jody's parents we did our best to relax and get ready for the long drive back home. Huge thanks to Grandma and Grandpa Bieganowski for the hospitality!



I'm not sure what night it was, but Kylie and Grandma Bieganowski got into a pretty good conversation. Only, it wasn't a conversation. Grandma would "moo" at Kylie and then Kylie would babble back. It was adorable! There's a pic of Grandma B. and Kylie in the big chair, I'm pretty sure it was taken right around the same time as the "moo-fest".



We stayed in Ohio until Thursday morning, when we left around 9:30. We stopped and saw Jody's friend Kristy and her new baby Ava (who is 6 weeks old), who live about two hours west of Jody's parents. Kristy was nice enough to whip us up some lunch...a delicious pizza casserole that we loved! Kylie was a big fan. So much so that Jody made it today for lunch and Kylie gobbled it up again. We left Kristy's house amid a pretty good snowstorm and drove all the way back to Terre Haute (it's almost exactly half way).



This time stayed in a lovely (and I mean it) Drury Inn. Big flat screen TV, granite counters, a fantastic free hot breakfast, doors/hallways on the inside, etc. All for just a few bucks more than the scary Day's Inn across the street. They even had a crib for Kylie! The most amazing thing was that Kylie slept like a rock in the new bed, in the new environment. What a trooper!



Anyways, we left there around 9:00am on Friday and arrived back home right at 3:15pm. We did gain an hour due to the time change, and we stopped in Columbia, MO for lunch. Kylie did quite well on both legs of the journey home.



We were even greeted home with some more snow! Yippee.



Here are some pictures that accompany the anecdotes above. There were just too many to plug into the post!