Weekend in Review

Joshua (age 2)

Friday night about 1 hour before we planned to leave, my mom called to tell me that Jenna (6 year old niece) had recently developed a 101 degree fever. Paul and I went round and round as to whether we should still leave at 6:30pm or not. The last time we were ALL together (December 2007) the kids were passing around a respiratory virus which Paul & I both caught and took with us to St. Thomas (vacation). We finally decided not to leave that night and to make a decision on Saturday morning after getting a report on how Jenna was doing. The next morning we decided to make the trip since Jenna was doing better. Nadia had her regular 90 minute morning nap, and we were hoping she'd take her afternoon nap en route to Maryland. It was the first time in a LONG time that we took that long of a road trip with her during the day. It went much better since she now faces forward. It's so much easier to feed her, hand her toys, etc. She slept about 40 minutes and didn't cry very much. We made 3 stops so our trip took 4 hours total. One stop was to shop at Ollie's for 15 minutes. I hadn't been to Ollie's since December. I could easily have spent more time (and money), but I was trying to be as quick as possible. I bought 10 books and 20 CD's for $40 total. Paul and I were getting tired of her current selection of CD's now that she wants to listen to them ALL day long. Now we should have more variety although 6 of the CDs are of Christmas music so we won't be playing those yet.

Andrew (4) and Jenna (6)

It was great to spend time with my sister and her family for the first time since May 2008. We met Nathan, who is such a happy baby (8 months old). He is VERY photogenic; he seems to know to smile for the camera. Wish I could teach Nadia that, LOL! We also enjoyed spending time with my parents, brother, and Aunt Janet.

Aunt Janet and Nadia (13 months)

We started our trip home at 7pm thinking Nadia would sleep the whole way home as she has in the past when we've left at that hour. 7:00 is her usual bedtime, and she had only napped 40 minutes on Sunday (compared to her norm of 2-3 hours). We figured she was VERY tired. It took her about 15 minutes to fall asleep, and then she slept soundly for one hour until we hit some construction on I-83 which brought our car to a stop. Not good for a baby. This woke her up, and unfortunately she NEVER fell asleep. She cried off and on for an hour, and then finally I just gave up and tickled her and played with her even though I was very nauseous and exhausted myself. The trip home took 3 1/2 hours (only 1 brief stop). She usually sleeps 11-12 hours at night. Last night including the one hour in the car she slept 9 hours. Thankfully she slept 1 hour and 40 minutes this morning as I was exhausted and really needed a nap myself. I guess we have to rethink our plan to drive at night as driving during the day seemed to work out better this time. I think she would have slept the whole way home if we hadn't come to a stop on the interstate, but with all the construction these days that's likely to happen. We don't plan to take her on that long of a road trip again until November.

Grandpa and Nathan (8 months)