Only about three weeks out of date...

All in all, the drive from Kansas to Washington went very smoothly for us.  All our hotels were booked ahead of time, so we were able/forced to plan ahead quite a bit.

Our first day was the shortest, at about seven and a half hours.  We had planned to spend Saturday morning packing up the car, and hit the road after lunch.  We knew it would be a very long afternoon/evening on the road, but we knew we'd need the whole morning, and figured that if the first day is the toughest, then each day afterward would be that much easier.

  Packing up the absolute essentials here.

We are such good Cajuns.

Jam-packed and jelly-tight

Unfortunately, between computer issues and two mad dashes out to ship boxes that wouldn't fit in the van, we didn't leave until 5:00.  PM.  With seven and a half hours between us and our first pre-booked hotel.

With all the excitement of packing, Hollie hadn't napped yet that day, so as soon as we got going she passed out which allowed us to go several hours without stops.  Eventually she woke up, and we got out our surprise brand-new toy for the road...

This is one of those magnetic doodling boards that has a little pen to draw with, and a eraser knob that slides up and down the side the clear it off.  She was hooked.

We had dinner in the car, and at about 10:00 Hollie fell asleep again, so we arrived at the hotel at about midnight.  That's only seven hours...including at least one stop that I can remember...yeah, we went fast.

Hollie woke up as we got into the room, but after a chance to stretch her legs and check things out, she was out again.  I fell asleep in the bed with her...until about 4:30am when I woke up with the feeling that someone was needing a little more space...

Yes, she is right in the middle of a queen-size bed there.  Rather than try to move her, I found my way over to Daniel's bed, only to find him sleeping diagonally across it.  Out. of. luck.  Hollie may look just like me, but some things are undeniably Daddy.  Lucky for both of them, I can sleep in very small non-human shaped spaces, even at 35-weeks pregnant.  :)  I love you two.

The next day was Sunday, so after some online guess-timating, we found a church about three hours away, with a mass time in about three hours.  We only arrived about five minutes late, which makes no sense when much-too-often we show up later than that when we live fifteen minutes away!  

Wyoming.

Blaaaah.

Even with that hour-long stop, it was still an easy day and we arrived at our next hotel early in the evening.

Monday was interesting.  We planned to stop in Deer Lodge, Montana, to see my mom's aunt, and then visit a college friend of ours who lives in Missoula, which was our next overnight stop.

Not very far into Monday morning, we hit a road closure.  Interstate's flooded.  A few minutes of fooling with the GPS, and we have an alternative route.  About two minutes later...signs saying that route is closed.  For snow.  Before we get too far off-track, we stop at a gas station for a real paper map and directions.  Guy at the gas station gives us a third route, which is going to put us two or three hours behind.  Not that we have a choice.

So, we get going.  Next...construction.  The road is gravel, and there is a 35 mph speed-limit.  For like 35 miles.  Maddening, but we get through it.

Fortunately after that, the day was smooth sailing.  Hadn't seen my mom's aunt since our wedding, and our college friend in...probably longer than that.

And these views...

        

...certainly didn't hurt, either.

The next day, Tuesday the 24th, was our last.  It was a fun, relaxed day, with beautiful weather and stop in the good-humored town of George, Washington.

And here we are!  Whew.  There you have it.  You're welcome.

Schedule = sanity + getting up early

So, the new routine is going okay.  It has been a crazy ride, going from 100% flexible to 100% scheduled in such a short time, but I don't think there's any other way to do it successfully.  For six mornings in a row I have gotten out of bed at 7am to wake Hollie up.  She has been napping at reasonable times, which is wonderful, but the new problem is that she naps for like three hours (that's a looooong nap!)...and then stays up until 10 or 11 just like before.  Which makes me feel horrible for waking her up so early the next morning (on top of feeling horrible for being up that early myself).  So...do I wake her up from her nap after an hour or so??  Geez, that makes me feel manipulative/micro-manage-y, not letting her sleep as long as she wants ever.  But on the other hand, it will do wonders for our sanity (all three four of us) to guarantee that she A) gets a nap and B) goes to bed at a reasonable time.  And there's no question that she does get plenty of sleep (and she'll get a little more if we can pull that bedtime back to about 9 or so). 

I hate having to wake her up.*  But if it works, it works, and doing nothing was definitely not working.

Sigh.  I'm just glad we're figuring this out now and not, oh, 19 weeks from now.

That's right...21 weeks today!
<----  See new photo
(Maybe one of these weeks I'll remember to move that soap dispenser.  No guarantees.)
 
*To clarify, I'm the only one that hates it.  She hasn't minded it one bit so far!  She's pretty happy in the morning no matter what time it is.  Plus, she gets to see Daddy in the morning before he leaves.  :)

We have been having lots of funny fun around here, too.  Great stories with photos coming soon...

This week on extreme nap-time makeover...

Over the last couple of weeks, Hollie's sleep has been in a bit of a downward spiral.  It's hard to say how it started.  She started sleeping later in the mornings, sometimes as late as 9.  She used to normally take a nap around noon or 1:00, but when she sleeps late, that's pretty much impossible.  Then 3 or 4 rolls around and still no nap, and Daniel gets home from work which is by far the best part of our day, so napping is out of the question at that point.  One of two things happens after that:

1. She crashes right before (or during) dinner, sleeps for an hour until I wake her up, and then stays up until  11 or so, and sleeps until 9 the next morning.
2. She gets really tired and grouchy right around dinner time, but gets her wild-child second wind and sprints in circles around the house until about 11, and sleeps until 9 the next morning.

In my "current condition", I am loving staying in bed until 9am.  It's the staying up until 11pm that I can't do.  And neither can Daniel, with work in the morning.

In order to reset our sleep patterns, I'm going to try waking her up a little earlier in the morning.  I didn't like the idea at first, because you never really know what you're going to get when you wake up a toddler.  Sometimes she's furious, sometimes she's groggy and clingy, and sometimes she looks at you and bursts out laughing like you just told the funniest joke she's ever heard. 

We tried it yesterday.  I woke her up at about 7:45.  It was probably a bad idea to try this on the weekend, because spending the whole day with Daddy was just too much fun for a nap to be possible (this really is all Daniel's fault, isn't it?).  She ended up crashing at about 4, and was up until 10 or so.  Not much improvement.

This morning I woke her up at 7.  We'll see how it goes...

Also, we're (I'm) going to work on a nap-time routine that is similar to bed-time.  For some reason we've never done a nap-time routine before.  With our unpredictable schedules, she's just fallen asleep when ever, where ever...which is obviously not working anymore.  It's time.

Update: Went into the room to read some books a little before 2, and asleep by 2:20.  Win!

"Ummo's nummers"

We may have a future accountant around here.  Hollie's been learning been learning about numbers (nummers) out of an Elmo (Ummo) book, and lately she's been pointing them out everywhere - on everything from phones to food packaging.  It's usually just nummers, but occasionally she specifies: Ummo's nummers.

To clarify, she does not actually know the numbers.  However, sometimes she sings to herself, "One-two-one-two-one-two!"

She sings a lot, and I love it.  Her songs usually go something like this:
"Mommy-daddy-baby-mommy-daddy-baby"
or
"Baby-doggie-nummers-baby-doggie-nummers"
or
"Sah-shoo-sah-shoo" (see below)
or
any combination, in a little sing-song voice.  I wish I could catch it on video, but you know how tough that is.  By the time the camera is out and turned on, she's moved on to something else.  You never know, I might get lucky!

Socks and shoes - sah-shoo.  Heard when we're getting ready to leave the house (or if she wants to leave (usually right before bedtime)).  Also heard around the same time...

Jacket - jack-ah
and
Hat - at! (always with a !)

Her pronunciation of water had slowly evolved from woggy,
to woddy,
to wah-doh,
and finally to wad-dah , which sounds pretty close to the real thing, just with a bit of an accent.

Her month-old obsession with lotion (show-shah) continues.  The definition has been expanded to include hand sanitizer and chapstick.

She is saying more foods, like...
Orange -  ornge (one syllable).  I feel so bad, because she loves them and asks for them constantly but gets an awful rash if she eats more than two or so a day!
Apple - appo or appah
Banana - mana
Sandwich - sammich
Water and juice - She knows I dilute her apple juice, so she usually asks for waddah-juice.

There are probably a few more, but I can't think of any at the moment.  I hope all of you don't get tired of reading stuff like this.  I read a quote recently, something to the effect of - You have to accept that no one else in the world thinks your child is as fascinating as you do.  I don't care if that's true, this is mostly for me anyway, because I just can't stand the thought someday I won't remember all these little things.

So, bear with me.  I know the real reason you keep coming back...photos like these:

  7:30 pm

This is what happens when you miss naptime!

You Capture - MY Choice!

Wiped.

Out.

 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------

This was the best challenge ever.  :)
Go see everyone else's choice of photo at
You Capture by Beth

Bee beh!

That's how Hollie says "big bed"!  She has one now.  :)

Since we got the second vehicle, we've been slowly cleaning out the garage so that hopefully - eventually-  we can park both of them in there.  The thing taking up the most space in there was the crib, which Hollie used between the ages of about 3 months and 10 months.  We planned on just moving it down to the basement, but we remembered that one side can be removed, like so:

They call it a "day bed", which I don't get.  She mostly uses it at night.

Whatever.

But I think she likes it...

Independent napper

Hollie is funny about her naptime and bedtime habits.

At bedtime, I stay with her until she falls asleep.  This is a capital-m Must.  She will not go to sleep unless someone is there.

At naptime in the afternoon, it's the opposite.  As she gets sleepy, I sometimes try to lure her into the bedroom to read some books (which is the last part of our bedtime routine) but she fights and fights and whines and whines and just refuses to relax.

However, sometimes when I notice the onset of drowsiness around noon or so, I sneak into the bedroom to fold some laundry or clean the bathroom.  [To be clear, I always have an eye on her, or at least an ear]  When I do this, she nearly always finds her way to her bed and into dreamland within like two minutes, without so much as a peep.

This just baffles me!  I cannot come up with a plausible explanation for why she would need to be lulled to sleep at night, but need to be on her own in order to nap in the afternoon.  I certainly didn't teach her.     

Maybe this is one of those things that I'll think about in a few years and it will all make sense, but for now, I guess if it works...it works.