Weekend Away

We are gone. And it is positively delightful! This is exactly what I needed.

We arrived in the city around 9:00pm. Our poor baby was pretty finished being in the car. He is a fabulous traveller, but this being his first trip facing forward in his car seat, he was too enthralled with the view to sleep. When he was finally beat enough to sleep, the sun chose to go down. It shone so brightly, I was holding things up, trying to block it from blinding his poor eyes. He cried and cried, until he cried himself to sleep. It was a very short nap but it helped. As soon as it was officially dim, he was back up.

The situation turned out to be good though. We brought him up to our room and played like crazy while Brady brought the rest of our stuff in. Dekker then had a big warm bottle and fell asleep without any fuss. Our room has two queen beds, so we put him on the other side of the second bed. On the outside wall, if you can picture it. The top of his playpen was level with the top of the bed, so he couldn’t see us or anything else for that matter. He had his own nice dark corner, which seemed to work perfectly.

The few nights we’ve spent in a hotel with Dekker have pretty much played out the same way. He goes to bed a little later than usual, wakes up once for a bottle and a cuddle, and then wakes up early for the day. We’ve come to accept that. I never sleep as well away from home as I do when I’m in my own bed either. However, the hum of the little air conditioning unit made nice white noise. Dekker didn’t make a sound, and obviously didn’t hear us watching “Lost” into all hours of the night. We finally bit the bullet and grabbed the  blanket off of the second bed. This is a nice hotel with nice people but the blankets are tiny. So we’re spending out weekend away sleeping with separate blankets for the first time in our entire marriage. Feels strange, but if I’m being honest, its sort of nice to not have to share.

We woke up pretty early this morning, between six and seven, to Dekker babbling. He normally wakes up and talks, falls back to sleep, wakes back up, and on and on, for a couple hours. He gets a little irritated if I come in to get him too early. He likes his mornings of playing, and getting up on his own time. Being in a new place is a little different though, hence the early mornings. This morning in particular was hilarious. He was jabbering away and Brady and I were both away but laying silently, waiting to see if he’d fall back to sleep. All of a sudden, his perfectly round pumpkin head poked up over the side of the second bed like a gopher. We both laughed, at that was pretty much the end of the night for us.

Early mornings can be good. We met up with Brady’s parents for breakfast. They’re here for a wedding and its a great coincidence that we happened to choose this weekend to disappear out here too. From breakfast, we went to the mall and did a little shopping. Bath & Body Works, H&M, Bed, Bath, and Beyond, places like that. More to come. We’re just back at our hotel now giving Deks a chance to nap before we head out to Ikea, Carter/Osh Kosh, and whatever else we can get our hands on.

Of course as I’m writing this, Dekker is talking away, fully aware that he’s not at home and therefore, being less cooperative than normal. He’s standing up in his playpen right now. Sigh. Oh, Goosey.

Might be an “ordering in pizza” kind of night. And Treehouse.