Life and such

Well, where to start. Life is flying so fast and I'm surprised how long it's been since I updated. On the other hand, it hasn't been nearly as long as some other people I know. tee hee. My brain is all fuzzy right now and I don't really know what has filled up the last few weeks. Time seems to be racing by and I can't believe it's almost November. What in the world?? Well, I guess I'll tell you the story of our little trip last week. Dave had fall break and we really wanted to get out of town but where to go? We didn't want to spend much on gas and hotels. So I found this really good deal on hotwire for a ritzy hotel in Biloxi, MS, 2 hours from here. That seemed doable. So we booked it and after we booked we found out it was a casino hotel. haha. I guess if we had been more up on Biloxi, we could have assumed. Anyway, Dave had to teach Wed. afternoon and we wanted to leave right after that. Aleah wasn't taking a good nap in the afternoon so finally I says, "you don't wanna sleep? Fine! You shall not sleep." And I kept her up for the next 3 hours or so. This was the first really dumb move of the day. The second was forgetting our GPS. The third was ... I'm getting ahead of myself. So we loaded up, and headed out to wade through nasty traffic and get out of town. My thought with keeping her up was that she'd conk out in the car and sleep the whole way there. It's true, we both forgot the GPS and because we always depend on that, didn't have maps or directions along. So we leave and Aleah does conk out but only slept about a half hour and then woke up rather fussy. She tried to get back to sleep for about an hour and a half. The third really dumb thing we did was not thinking to check her diaper when she couldn't sleep, despite being very tired. DOH!! The forth really dumb thing we did was not stop to get a map. Dave thought he knew how to get there, and we did eventually get there, but it took much longer than it could have. = L That, combined with the traffic, turned a 2 hour drive into over 3.5. When we FINALLY arrived, what seemed like an eternity later, we pulled up to our mansion and when I got Aleah out of her seat, realized that she had a huge blow out with poop all over herself and her car seat. I felt SO awful and just hoped to goodness that she had done it recently, but I suspect that was why she couldn't sleep. I felt like the most rotten mom on the planet. Here we were, arriving at this den of iniquity, with our very tired, very hungry, very poopy BABY, of all things. The fifth really dumb thing that we had nothing to do with, was that when we arrived in the parking garage, a car alarm was going off so loud it was insane. It was like a soothing balm to my frayed nerves. Or not. I didn't even want to get her out of the car. It was seriously loud. So anyway, we go to check in and felt sort of weird. There were many middle age men with gold chains, and few pink fuzzy pajamas. She was some what of a star there though - all the mid life crisis folks loved chatting it up with her. Anyway, that was the worst of the little trip, but overall, it wasn't overly relaxing. I'm not sure how you're supposed to have a relaxing vacation anymore, when you pack up the source of your exhaustion and bring it along with you. But anyway... It was nice to see the coast, get away, and um... see the coast. Aleah's sleeping habits have been interesting lately (see below. I think, or maybe above). She would be really tired in the morning so I'd out her to bed for a morning nap and she'd sleep for a half hour or so and then wake up. Then by the time we were ready to go out and about and explore, she'd be tired and cranky and wanting to sleep. arg. I'm figuring out that no matter how tired she is, if she's not awake at least 2 hours in the morning, she won't take a long nap. If I put her to bed 2 hours after she wakes up, she'll take a nice long one. Anyhoo, So we drug our cranky little turkey around the city seeing the sights and such. After not sleeping well again Friday morning, we were driving to a BBQ place that Dave had seen online. She had of course just fallen asleep as we approached the restaurant. So I took great care to set her car seat in the stroller every so gently and quietly. I thought she could sleep while we ate and then she wouldn't be a tired cranky mess. Well, we got inside and the cheery waitress saw the stroller and in order to make room for it, slid a table and bunch of chairs along the concrete floor creating quite a ruckus. Of course wide awake baby. The nice happy ending is that we left right after that and she slept the entire way home, as God intended babies to do on car trips. And that's the end of our trip. And I can't stay awake so that's all for now.