Travelling

From Louisville-Cincinnati Trip, Aug. 2009

Nicholas did a great job on the actual travelling from point A to point B, but was overwhelmed by the number of different people and places involved in our trip. We drove around 1700 miles and crossed state lines 8 times and I think Nicholas was awake for a grand total of less than 2 hours in the car. We stopped at a rest area each way to feed him and give him some awake time, trying to keep the daytime car sleep feeling like naps. The rest areas in WV and OH are great for this because they have picnic tables spread across grass, giving me some semi-privacy to feed him, and lots of trees and such to show him as we walk around. And on the longer drive out we also stopped for a few hours at an aunt and uncle's house, which gave Nicholas a long awake spell.

But every time he woke up we were in another new place with a host of new people. We learned that in these situations Nicholas has two gears: charming and meltdown. He can work a crowd with his grins and laughter (and seems to really enjoy the attention for awhile), but he hits a point where he gets overwhelmed and needs to regroup, which was often only accomplished when he cried himself to sleep after screaming inconsolably. This meant he was something of a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde on this trip, either angelic or a nightmare.

There are pictures of the trip (along with captions that hopefully work as a narration) here, but even I was unable to document even a fraction of the people Nicholas met. He met all four of my grandparents, 4 great aunts and uncles on one side and I think 15 on the other side, a host of my cousins (whatever that relationship is to him--I always get confused), some of my cousins' kids, and a bunch of my college friends and their husbands and kids.

Despite the fact that he had more (and more extreme) meltdowns than normal and had a lot more trouble sleeping at night (back to getting up every 2 hours or so), I think Nicholas actually enjoyed the trip and we think it was good for him to be forced to stretch his comfort zone some. He is so used to spending all his time in our living room with one of the two of us and everything centered around his needs, but on this trip he had to adapt to more noise while napping (which he did better with, although still not nearly as well as the other kids we were with) and new people and places.

He also really enjoyed watching the older kids (7 months, 2, and 4) and playing with their toys. Watching him playing with one of my roommates' daughter's toys convinced us we need to get him some more toys. The toys were a little beyond him, but that actually seems like the perfect time to buy them, to challenge him and give him time to grow into them before he grows out of them. As much as he loves the animals on his playmat, he has been playing with them every day for the past 2 months, so we should probably mix things up some.

All in all, we had a lot of fun and like always I miss everyone like crazy now, but for the first time I am actually also glad to be home. I wish we could live closer to them and see them more often, but our crazy marathon trips and staying as guests in other people's houses don't work as well now.