Wherein we attempted to sleep in the same room as our 2 year old son

So, in JANUARY we decided to take a little mini-vacay with Silas before Evie arrived.

We went to Charleston, SC and got a hotel room.

This was supposed to be super exciting, as Silas had never been to a hotel before.

It was exciting (for us) for about 5 minutes and then we discovered that Silas could unlock the deadbolt on the door and let himself out.

It was a regular hotel room with a King bed and we asked for a roll-away for the kid.

Mind you, I was 8+ months pregnant and hadn't been sleeping well for a few weeks already so WHAT MADE US THINK WE WOULD SLEEP IN THIS SITUATION is beyond me.

Bedtime on the first night rolls around and it is apparent that Silas is way too excited to be away from home to go to sleep at any decent hour.  Also, he didn't want to stay in his awesome bed with wheels.  He didn't want to STAY in our big bed with us either.  He wanted to CATAPULT himself from one to the other over and over and over again.

I had just picked up my Rx of Ambien (thank you sweet baby Jesus for this wonderful drug!) but was afraid to take it in case it made me sleep so hard that I couldn't hear Silas trying to escape the room.  I kept having visions of him getting out into the hall, then in the elevator, and then finding his way to the pool. 

Yeah.  No sleep happening with THAT going on in my head.

The first night he finally fell asleep around 11pm but since we had never slept with him before we didn't know that he is a mover.  I mean, the kid rolls and kicks and flails.  Again, no sleep happening for the grown-ups.

I was MISERABLE.

So miserable, in fact, that I had decided that we were driving home first thing the next morning.

I don't do well with no sleep so no sleep + 8 months preggo + not being at home = very cranky Mommy.

I just wanted to cut our losses and head out before anything got worse.  

After eating a bit of breakfast, we decided to go on with the plan for the day and if we still were miserable (because Justin was too) then we could drive home later in the afternoon.

We had lunch with Jason, one of Justin's friends and a groomsman in our wedding, and then we all went to tour an aircraft carrier that is retired and docked in the bay.  It's been so long that I can't even remember the name of the thing.  Wait, yes I do, it's the USS Yorktown (thank you Google). It's been turned into a floating museum and it was very interesting.  Silas LOVED getting to see a real life "hopterdopter" (helicopter) and even though there were about 1092384610293864 stairs (and by stairs I mean nearly-straight-up-very-narrow-staircases), me and my belly managed to do just fine (though my sciatica made quite a fuss later that day).

We decided to go ahead and stay there that night.

I decided that Justin was going to be on Escape Prevention duty and I was taking an Ambien.

Apparently Ambien makes me do weird things.

Things that I do not remember AT ALL when told about them.

This night I asked for 8 glasses of milk (and I was serious) and kept asking if there were more people on the TV than were really there.  

But DANG did I sleep!

_____________________________________________________

Rabbit Trail:

Another time that I took Ambien I stayed up for another 2 hours watching zit-popping videos on youtube on my phone. In bed. Justin finally took my phone away and when he told me about it the next morning I thought he was lying. And then I checked my youtube history.  

He wasn't.

_________________________________________________________

The next day we met Kristi and Avery (Jason's wife and daughter) for breakfast and then we went to the beach to play before heading home.

It ended up being a fun (yet exhausting) trip and one that we can laugh about now.

Here's a ton of pictures in no particular order (but what did you expect? It's nearly September and I'm just now posting a trip from January.)

Enjoy.

Silas and Avery

I forgot to mention that we went to the beach by ourselves the first day there.  Silas IMMEDIATELY ran into the frigid water and so the next day we had to buy him new shoes.

Picking up shells with Daddy

Last picture as a family of 3

Freezing (because he was soaked) but trying to pretend he wasn't.

I love this one.

The USS Yorktown aircraft carrier

HOPTERDOPTER!!!

A big gun.

  See that boy scout in the background? There were about 500 of them there that day and they were super annoying.  I wanted to push a few of them over the side of the ship.

WHAT?!

Hormones.

I can't remember what part of the ship this was. Classroom?  War room?

Just riding a missile.

when he finally fell asleep the first night

barefoot because we weren't about to ruin a 2nd pair of Nikes

Jellies!

 (probably the number one reason I do not swim in the ocean)

Charleston, South Carolina

January 27-29, 2012

Then and now

 Silas 5 1/2 months

Evie 5 1/2 months

exact same computer cord.

1st day of school!

Silas is at his 1st day of preschool EVER right now. {Zion Baptist}

The past 24 hours have been absolutely CRAZY for my brain and for us.

We had his Open House yesterday and everything went smoothly as far as Open Houses go, except that there was a HUGE shock for us when we were reading the handbook and it said that 3 year old preschool was Monday - Thursday.  You see, when I went up to the school to tour it and met with the church secretary to get him registered, I was told it was Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.  Honestly I'm not sure we would have put him in it if we knew that it was 4 days a week, but it is what it is now and I am sure that he is going to be happy with it - I just was NOT prepared for that and spent the rest of the time there and the  evening trying not to spontaneously combust into a puddle of tears from being overwhelmed with it all.

We also found out that he is only allowed to wear athletic tennis style shoes (no other closed toe shoes are allowed) and since he didn't have any we had to spend 2 hours trying to find some that fit.  Shoot me.  That would have been nice to know a couple of weeks ago instead of less than 24 hours from when school started.

So, as you can tell, I'm a little irritated about it all.  But I am trying to get over it.

He has been very excited about going to school and I think he is going to love it.

In the car on the way there he started saying that he wanted us to stay with him so I was worried about him having a meltdown when it was time to leave, but he did great. We walked him in this morning and he took his little bag straight to his cubby and hung it up and then got his snack and went and put it in their snack cubbies.  There was a bubble machine blowing in his classroom so he immediately started jumping in those and we took a picture and hugged him and then he said bye to us and we left.  No tears from him!

I'm going to pick him up in 30 minutes and I can't wait to hear about all of his adventures!

Silas, Age 3

Evie {5 months}

 Evie girl is 5 months old!

She is 24 1/2 inches long (25th %) and weighs 12lbs 6oz (10th %).  Apparently she is tiny (as EVERYONE insists on telling me) but she is healthy and happy and beautiful. :)

At 5 months she is:

*eating rice cereal like a champ and getting reading to make the switch to oatmeal cereal

*taking a morning nap (if we are at home) for an hour or so and a lunchtime/afternoon nap for about 2-3 hours

*loving her Johnny Jumper

*feeding herself a bottle when someone else feeds her

*turning in circles on her tummy to get to toys

*starting to inch forward to get to toys

*laughing a lot (especially at Silas)

*ticklish on the bottom of her feet (and that's about the only place)

There's probably a ton of things that I am forgetting (I'm certain there are) but Silas started preschool today (!!!) and my brain is a bit mushy.

Here's her 5 month picture and then a recap of the last 4 months. :-)