First Road Trip

Thus far the longest that Ian has spent in the car at one time has been about 25 minutes. Tomorrow night we are driving to Maryland as my sister and her two youngest children flew into Baltimore from Chicago on Tuesday. This will be Ian's longest road trip to date. I have no idea how much he'll sleep or scream or whether we'll need to stop along the way so that I can nurse him. The trip normally takes about 3.5 hours. If he does cry, this guarantees that Nadia will sleep. I have noticed that if Ian starts screaming in the car, Nadia falls asleep very soon after that. I think it's her way of coping as she doesn't like hearing him cry. Of course my preference is that neither of them would cry, at least not for any lengthy periods of time that is. During this trip, my two siblings who haven't met Ian yet (Maurice & Wendy) will get to hold the little guy. I'm not sure when he'll meet Wendy's husband and/or eldest daughter. I think Nadia will have fun playing with her cousins! Hopefully we won't bring any germs back with us. :-)

We plan to go down Friday night and come back Sunday night. I'm hoping that Paul and Maurice might be able to take Nadia and her cousin Adam (who turned 3 last month) to the Baltimore Aquarium. I think they'd enjoy that! I would love to see Nadia's responses, but I think it would be better if I stayed with Ian. I'm also looking forward to introducing Ian to friends at my parent's church and hopefully playing a game of Boggle with my Dad and sister. If you think of me on Friday night or Sunday night, I'd appreciate prayers that the trip will go as smoothly as possible. I'm hoping we won't be "serenaded" by crying for hours.

Yesterday I started working on my 45 by 45 list by making a new recipe. You can read about it here. Ian did take a morning nap in the Nap Nanny, but it was only 1 hour long (compared to his 2 hour naps last Wednesday and Thursday). Nadia followed suit and only slept for 40 minutes. That is NOT long enough now that she only has one nap a day particularly when she didn't sleep well on Tuesday night. Hopefully her nap will be much longer today. While giving her a bath yesterday, I had Ian in the bouncer. He'll turn 3 months old in 8 days. The second picture is of Nadia in the same bouncer the day after she turned 3 months old. She was definitely bigger at this stage than he is. I hope he grows enough that all the clothes I bought for him to wear this summer will fit. Thankfully summer clothes are more flexible since you don't have to worry about things like the sleeves being too long.

I was reminded again of what a little peanut he is when I was at ladies Bible study on Tuesday morning. A woman came in with a newborn and as she sat down behind me commented that my son must be even younger than hers. I said, "Not necessarily, how old is yours?" To which she replied, "He'll be 6 weeks old this week." He was much bigger than Ian. I informed her that Ian would be 12 weeks old this week but that he came 6 weeks early. Her son came 2.5 weeks late so actually his due date was 2 weeks earlier than Ian's although Ian came 6 weeks before her son did. She said her kids don't want to come out as she's had to be induced twice now. I said both of mine came early. This baby was born the week of Ian's due date so imagine that is what Ian would look like now if he had come on time. They say he would have likely weighed at least 9lbs if he had gone full-term since he was already at 6lbs at 34 weeks.

Yesterday I finished grading one assignment (technically I finished today as I was grading in the middle of the night while feeding Ian). Today I want to grade an assignment for another class. I also hope to get Ian to take a morning nap in his bed and for Nadia to have two naps. She woke up REALLY early. She got maybe 9.5 hours of sleep last night. I am not sure what the problem is. Maybe she's teething? Ian slept from 9pm-3am (YAY) and then it took me 75 minutes to get him back down. I figured he would sleep until 5:45 as his second stretch is usually 1.5 hours long. Unfortunately Nadia woke up not long after he went down, and he went down at 4:15am!! She is one very sleep deprived girl at this point between two days of napping less than one hour plus two nights of not getting anywhere near her usual 11 hours of sleep. Her waking also meant I got less than 6 hours of sleep even though Ian was in the Nap Nanny for 7 hours. At least Ian is going in the right direction in terms of sleeping at night as he slept a 6 hour stretch two nights in a row for the first time!