DC Day 2

DAY 2
Do you see the bed we slept in? It was king-sized. Jeremy and I thought we had gone to heaven. It was soft and huge. You have to understand that we have been sleeping in a double since we got married, and so this mattress was great. We had so much room! Anyway, onto the sight-seeing.

Our first stop was the Holocaust Museum. When I visited DC eight years ago with my family, this was one of my favorite and most memorable museums. I couldn't wait to see it again, but we were only about 25 minutes into the two-hour visit when Cambrie started to lose it. She didn’t want to ride in her stroller anymore, she wanted to walk. Lately she has been playing a game where she goes completely limp while holding your hand so you have to pull her up. She won’t walk, she won’t stand, she won’t even stay in your arms, and she just becomes “noodle baby” and won’t do anything. Well, she started playing this game and when I pulled her up from the floor she started crying like she was in pain. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t pull her up hard or any differently than I had been, she just started crying. We stepped out of the foot traffic and sat down in a video booth to see what was going on. She wouldn’t move her hand or her arm and cried when we touched it. She was definitely guarding it and it made me worried. We found a guide who showed us the way to the nurse. Cambrie hadn’t gotten any better by then and it looked like her hand was starting to swell. We decided that maybe we should take her to the ER to get an X-Ray taken since we couldn’t do anything more for her. We could barely put on her coat because she didn’t want to move her arm and when I carried her out she let her arm just hang limply by her side. I couldn’t help but think, “Oh great. I just broke my daughter’s hand." Or, "I horribly sprained her wrist." Or, "I pulled her shoulder out of its socket.” I was having visions of going to the hospital and putting Cambrie’s arm in a cast. “I would definitely choose pink, because I like hot pink. But maybe I should choose yellow because that’s Cambrie’s favorite color.” The thoughts kept coming and I couldn’t help but think it was all my fault, but I didn’t know what I did wrong.

As soon as we stepped out of the museum, Jeremy offered Cambrie a gummy to help keep her happy. She shocked us both by grabbing it with her injured arm. What?! Did we just see what we thought we saw? He offered her another one and she grabbed it too, no wincing or crying involved. You have got to be kidding. Nothing was wrong? We sat for awhile on the grass near the Washington Monument trying to decide what to do. Something had hurt her. She was in pain and her hand was a little swollen. But, she’s obviously not in pain now. She can move all of her fingers, hand and wrist, and she’s chasing us around. The doctors would just look at us like we were crazy if we went now and wouldn’t do anything since there’s nothing they could do. We decided just to keep going with our day and if there was another pain we would go to the hospital. Luckily there never was. Cambrie fell down a couple of times and didn’t even wince as she landed. At least she is okay. (This picture was taken just three mintues after the gummy incident.)
For fun we went to the Air and Space Museum. Jeremy was dying to touch a moon rock, see some rockets, and do the flight simulator. He’s a lot like my dad and loves planes. It totally brought back memories of my dad when we were there before. The one disappointment was that Jeremy also wanted to see the SR-71, the space shuttle and F-14, but they are in a separate hanger in Chantilly, Virginia. Maybe that will be next trip. He loved the flight simulator though. You get to be the pilot and the gunner in an F-14. The simulator rolls, pitches, turns, and there’s some nifty G-force going on inside of the cabin. Jeremy had a blast. It’s a good thing he didn’t have to rely on me to be his gunner, because we wouldn’t have lasted long.
After lunch we had tickets to go inside the Washington Monument. We waited for our turn in the rain. It rained the entire weekend. We came home completely soaked and grateful for the one umbrella we had remembered to bring with us. While in the Monument you go up an elevator to 500 feet and get to look out the eight windows up on top. While you’re up there you can see the White House, the National Mall, the US Capitol, the Lincoln Memorial, and the Jefferson Memorial. On the way down they clear the windows in the elevator so you can see the memorial stones inside the monument. 200 stones were donated during construction from various dignitaries and ordinary towns and they’re neat to see.
Cambrie was ready for another nap, so we took a long walk. We found the White House, Ford’s Theater, and the International Spy Museum. While at the White House, all Jeremy wanted to see was Secret Service. He was trying to talk me into jumping the fence to see what would happen. I finally convinced him that if I did that it would ruin my whole life so it probably wasn’t a good idea. He conceded but still wanted to see Secret Service.
That night we were exhausted. Dinner was take-out pizza brought back to the hotel. We picked this up from King St. in Alexandria, VA. It is a super cute town with a fun shopping night-life. Did I mention there were three ice-cream parlors next to this pizza place? Yes, I restrained myself and only came home with the pizza.
We purposely booked a hotel with a pool so Cambrie could go swimming. She’s getting better about her face getting wet and even lets us put her “under.” We’re working on jumping in. Basically she leans over the edge with arms outstretched just waiting for you to grab her. She’s not scared, just doesn’t get it yet.