A Weekend in Maryland

My sister, Wendy, and two of her kids flew from Chicago to Baltimore on Wednesday morning. We had planned to drive down Friday night, but on Wednesday Paul learned that his advisor was headed to Florida. We decided to drive down Thursday night because Paul could get just as much work done on my mom's laptop than he could on his desktop computer. We left around 6:45pm and arrived at my parents around 10:20pm. Ian slept almost the whole way. I changed his diaper and put his pjs on and then he screamed for 30 minutes in my mom's pack and play before he fell asleep. Nadia watched dvd's in the car for the first 90 minutes of our trip and then slept the next two hours. We didn't take her down to bed until Ian had stopped crying and unfortunately it took her until almost midnight to fall asleep. Ian had a horrible night, but I didn't get him until 6:00am. On Friday night he did much better - he slept from 8pm to 5:45am.

During our previous trips Nadia has only engaged in parallel play with her cousins. During this weekend they were truly playing together. Adam wasn't that interested in playing with Nadia, but she and Rachel played together quite a bit. It was so sweet to watch! Rachel won't turn 2 for two more months, but she is very, very advanced verbally. Ian really enjoyed the cars and trucks that used to be Maurice's when he was little. We don't have any cars that size (ours are smaller or much bigger). I will be buying Ian some new vehicles in the near future as he had a blast with these! All four kids enjoyed our trip to a playground on Saturday morning.

Unfortunately both Paul and my mom fell on their backs and hit the back of their heads on the floor on Saturday. My mom slipped on Ian's vomit (she came in to help clean and didn't realize that he had vomited in more than one place). She landed on her back. Her head hit the handle of a cabinet drawer before hitting the floor. OUCH! On top of that she had lots of his "up-chuck" in her hair and the back of her top. Yuck!

After dinner while my sister and mom were en route to the Bach Sinfonia concert (my sister is concertmaster), Paul and my dad went bowling while I gave Rachel, Nadia, and Ian a 45 minute bath (while Maurice played with Adam). While bowling Paul slipped and was at one point horizontal in the air and then landed on the floor of the bowling lane on his back. Both Paul and my mom had headaches that night. Not Fun.

We left my parent's house at 6:20pm and expected to arrive at home around 9:45. It had been raining all day, so we didn't think to check the weather. Big Mistake! The next time we travel to MD in the winter, we will check the weather in PA even if we're experiencing nice weather in MD. If we had left at 1:30pm (during Nadia's nap), the trip would have been much shorter and less stressful. The last 2 hours of the trip we were averaging about 25 MPH (speed limit 55). We passed many, many, many accidents. On the radio this morning they described the weather last night as "blizzard like conditions." I drove the first 3.5 hours of the trip, and Paul drove the last hour. We arrived home a little before 11pm. We were grateful that we got home safely. Ian watched the DVD for the first 50 minutes and then slept almost the whole rest of the way home. He woke up once or twice and cried for a few minutes, but otherwise he slept. I didn't realize he had a poopy diaper so the poor guy got a bad case of diaper rash from our trip home last night.

Nadia watched dvds the first 2+ hours of the trip, and then we tried to get her to go to sleep. That took forever! She didn't fall asleep until sometime past 9:30pm, and she's usually in bed by 8pm. She also got up earlier than usual this morning - I think because we were letting Ian cry (as we do every morning) until 6am. She was a very cranky girl today as she got less than 8 hours of sleep last night, and she usually gets 11 hours. Her art class was cancelled this morning due to the snow. She got to play in the snow with Daddy though!

Ian gained back 4 ounces while we were in MD. His weight has been up and down so much the past 3+ months. He didn't throw up at all yesterday or today, for which I am very grateful. Squirting juice in his mouth is working perfectly as the means for getting him to keep down the tablet of Prevacid. He has accepted every kind of juice I've given him (cranberry, grape, etc.). My mom did a fabulous job of getting him to eat. Saturday was a new record - he ate TWO full containers (7 ounces total) of baby food in one day. Unfortunately I only got 1 ounce of baby food in him today, and that was with a lot of crying. I tried a different sippy cup with him today, and he accepted it without any problems. That was encouraging.