Road Trip #2

For the 4th of July weekend, we ventured on our first big road trip to Greg's parents' house in Missouri.  Before Davis was born, we had talked about going to Missouri over Memorial Day weekend.

As Memorial Day approached, we realized that idea was insane, since we could barely go to the grocery store.

So our focus shifted to the 4th of July.  We were hopeful, especially given last weekend's successful mini-trip, but a bit apprehensive.

Davis turned out to be a CHAMPION traveler!  We are so proud of him!  We left at 7 p.m. on Friday night (hoping he'd sleep most of the day) with plans to spend the night with friends in St. Charles, making the trip closer to 4 hours than 6.  Except for a stressful meltdown while stuck at a complete standstill on the interstate for a long time (due to a lane being closed for seemingly non-existent construction), Davis did a fanastic job snoozing or just sitting contentedly.  He even slept just fine in a strange house with broken air-conditioning, only waking up once in the night, and was a very happy baby all the next day as we spent the day with our friends, and did really well on the trip to Columbia later that afternoon.

We had a really good time visiting Greg's family.  His sister's family came as well, so Davis was able to get some quality time with his aunt, uncle, and cousins as well as Grandma and Grandpa.  He just loved all the attention and adoration!  He was a really good baby the whole weekend, sleeping quite well at night and taking excellent naps.

Our plan was to take the entire day on Tuesday to come home.  Davis was very fussy on Tuesday morning, so we were pretty worried about how it would go, but once we got on the road he did well.  I sat in the back to keep him entertained.  He snoozed and then started to get hungry as we approached St. Louis.  Uh-oh!  The poor baby had to cry for a little while (with Mommy desperately trying to calm, comfort, and distract him) until we got to a Babies R Us, where we stopped in order to use the nice Mother's Room to change and feed him and spend a little out-of-the-carseat time.  Not too long after we got back on the road, he fell asleep and napped for three hours.

Oh, heaven.

Except for the fact that I was starving.  We were going to stop in Effingham, IL to eat, but he was still sleeping, so we kept going and going.  We finally got off in Terre Haute, IN.  Greg filled up the gas tank . . . still sleeping.  We stopped at Panera, ordered, and ate . . . still sleeping on my shoulder.  I finally started to nurse him (this is at the 3 hour nap mark) and he woke up while eating.  We decided that maybe we should have just kept going and we might have even made it home before he woke up, but oh well.  The on-ramp was closed (seriously?), so we ended up taking the highway (US 40) home, which probably took slightly longer, and we did have to stop one more time, but Davis was such an amazingly good little traveler.

Good job, little buddy!

Greg's mom wanted a picture with all of her grandchildren.  Getting three kids to cooperate for a picture is no easy task.

For example, here's one of the failed attempts:

 And this is the best shot I got:

 Davis was such a happy baby that I finally got some pictures of him smiling at the camera!  Normally he stops smiling and just stares at the camera.  But his smile is oh-so-cute!

All in all, it was a successful road trip and gives us hope for the future!  :)

From Loving the Life We Live