Notes From My Trip « The Blog for the Sports Gamer

25Jul/054

Notes From My Trip

Appleton is a wonderful town. I think I saw two mom & pop bookstores while driving down the College Ave. in the downtown area. That's two more than I've seen in the last fifteen years (at least it feels like it). If you have cause to visit, be sure to grab a bite at Good Eats, which has some tasty steak dinners (among many other things, but being at a wedding rehearsal dinner our menu was limited).
You know you're a parent when -after cutting your finger- you find yourself applying a Care Bears band-aid to it. Ugh.
Trying to keep your 19-month old off the dance floor at a wedding reception is impossible.
Trying to keep your 19-month old from running around in the rain at the outdoor day-after get together is impossible. (30% chance of rain my ass)
Trying to get your 3 or 19-month old to do anything you want them to do (say sit still or stop crying) in potentially embarrassing social situation is beyond impossible. Nothing like trying to calm a crying baby and make an antsy toddler sit still during the dinner blessing and the various toasts when your wife is part of the wedding party and unable to help.
Depth perception may not be an attribute my daughter is blessed with. At an "Oasis" rest stop outside Chicago we were having lunch. Little Ana stood up on her chair, took one step forward (like she was walking the plank) and promptly face-planted on the hard floor. That is a scream I'd like to never hear again. (I'm not sure if it was Ana's or mine, because that scared the ever-living shit out of me.) I'm absolutely stunned that she came away with her face intact, aside from a rather nasty bruise just above her eye. I still can't fathom what sequence of firing (or misfiring) synapses in that child's head made her think it was a good idea to just step off a chair.
Untold Legends for the PSP is fun for the first six hours and mindlessly repetitive after that.
Driving for seven hours straight with two kids under the age of two is a mistake (no shock there).
Never stay at the hotel closest to the wedding reception. Drunk ass f#!$ers all end up staying on the same floor and not shutting up until your third complaint call to the front desk at 2am gets the asshats thrown out. (True story. Though it did save us $80 on the room for that night.)
Coming home is nice. Having to clean up cat droppings all over the bathroom and living room floor not so much (something's wrong with that cat) . The dozen tiny ants I found crawling around in our kitchen didn't help.
Having your 3-month old sleep from 9:30 to 4:30 (by far shattering his prior record) is awesome.

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Glen
July 25th, 2005 - 10:44

I’ve been lucky enough to have my 7 month old daughter sleeping from 7:00 to 6:30 every night since 3 months. I can hardly remember the whole waking up 3 times in a night to feed her routine. It’s a wonderful feeling.

Glen
krzyman
July 25th, 2005 - 11:02

I read a post over at OS about turning catch assist on in the easy play mode. Then you have to turn everything else off from that mode. I haven’t tried it but some guys said it helped a lot.
Gwon
July 25th, 2005 - 13:24

You guys suck. My 11 month old son will sleep from about 8:30 to 1:00, breast feed, and, if we’re lucky, go back down until 6:00-6:30, breast feed again, then sleep until 8-9.

Last night he was up at 1:30, back in his room at 2:30, but awake and crying. My wife fed him AGAIN until about 3. He was back in our bed at 6 to eat, yet again and finally up for good at 8.

Nothing like a night of broken up sleep to start a week. Ugh.
Todd
July 25th, 2005 - 14:07

Gwon – what you describe is pretty much exactly what we went through with our older daughter. We got her onto an 8pm bedtime after a few months, but it took nine months before she consistently got through the night (say 6am) w/o losing her mind or needing to feed.

Kyle’s better than she was so far, but we haven’t had any luck in getting him to sleep in his bassinet (he prefers his swing) and last night was the first time he slept more than four hours consecutively. Usually its just three hours.

I so cannot wait for this kid to be about 8-12 months old. It gets so much better after that.

Not that it will help, but I will say it took some serious tough love with Ana to establish not just a stable bed time, but sleeping through the night and consistent naps. A whole lot of just putting her down and letting her cry it out. It took forever, but now family and friends are amazed at how good she is about going to bed and at least making it till 6am before getting us up.

Regardless, man you have my sympathies. As a narcoleptic I do not cope well with interrupted sleep. I need a solid six hours to stay funcitonal, so Kyle is flat out kill’n me.