Just Me and the Baby
Recently E and I did something we hadn't done before - we packed up the car and drove off for the weekend, without Tom!
We had a baby shower to go to, and Tom had some work stuff, and so we ended up parting ways. (Plus when given the choice between weekend alone or a baby shower, he maybe leaned towards being able to sleep in...)
The weekend started off with a visit to the doctor for E, where he did wonderful. No concerns here - his doctor says he's perfect! I then tried to quickly finish packing the car so I could time our trip with his nap, but as my favorite daycare teacher says "Sometimes you take a nap, and sometimes the nap takes you..." and so we started off with an impromptu face plant nap before we left. Since we're officially in the "E can roll over" stage, we're less worried about him sleeping on his back. In fact I left him on his back on his play mat, went to write Tom a note, and when I came back he was on his stomach and asleep.
Sleep is definitely the topic of the day. With rolling comes no more night swaddling. We knew it was coming, we were dreading it, we were pretending it wasn't ever going to happen. And now it's here. E slept great while swaddled. (Well great for a baby - he was still up every 3 hours.) Unswaddled the nights go something like this:
"Oh my gosh, I HAVE HANDS!" *nom*nom*nom*tasty hands*
"WAHHHHH! Why am I awake!? I'm TIRED!"
"Ooooh look hands! Must wake up and play with them!"
"WAHHHHHHH! So tired!"
And repeat. He'll learn. We'll get there. But for now we're expecting some rough nights. So it actually worked out that I went to VT with E, so Tom could rest up. Then when we got back, I could catch up on sleep and Tom could take over.
So sleep was a little bumpy. So was the car ride. Not horrible, but definitely different than driving without a baby. Without a baby if you're a little hungry but only have 20 minutes left, you can push through and eat when you reach your destination. If you're a baby, though, you can't really use reasoning. You can't say - "Oh hey baby, I see you're hungry, but we're almost there!" Nope. You stop. Even though you're SO CLOSE. And not having a second adult in the car meant there was no distracting the baby either.. So it took us a while to make the trip, but we did it.
But the rest of the trip was worth it. We had fun and I got in some extra E squeezes after working all week, and Tom got a lot of stuff done around the house. It's apparently a lot easier to find time to mow the lawn if there isn't a tiny baby around! Who knew?