Negative three weeks old, four days old… and seven-and-a-half months old!
Those jeggings! Those cheeks! That hair! Love.
Progression January 28, 2013
Kitty Twins! January 27, 2013
Adele loves her kitty so much she tries to dress like her now! “Hug Me!”
The Rest of EJ & Sarah’s Trip!
I loved, loved love’d EJ’s guestpost about their trip to visit Adele recently. But there were so many more pictures from their trip that I wanted to share.
Pardon the photo dump, these were all too good not to share!
Zion: Waterfalls and Emerald Pools January 26, 2013
Here is the last of my Zion posts. If you are catching up, here’s what you missed:
Tuesday was our last day in Zion, so we made the most of it! It took us a couple of hours to get two adults and one baby dressed, fed and packed up. We tried to pack light, but it still ended up being about four trips the car! Babies have a lot of stuff. Some of which we didn’t even end up needing –ahem, Pack N’ Play, I’m looking at you.
Anyways, all the effort to get out the door early paid off when we realized we had exceptionally perfect weather for a hike.
Whoo hoo! Baby loves her sweet ride! Our destination this time were the hikes around the Emerald Pools. It’s supposed to be a loop, but the middle of the loop was closed due to ice so we did it in two separate parts so we could see the whole thing.
Usually this is a waterfall, but it freezes when it gets cold.
Although it would have been awesome to see the waterfalls flowing, I much prefer the 50*-60* temperatures over the 110* it can be in the summer!
On our way around the second side of the loop, we found our own “Narrows”. haha
It’s hard to get a family photo when Adele can’t see over Daddy’s head. lol But she was there!
The frozen pools were so neat. The camera really doesn’t capture the contrast in colors in the park.
Towards the top of the hike, the trail turned to sandstone stairs…
…that led us to the Emerald Pools! (I’m told in the summer they are much bigger).
But still impressive nonetheless. This picture was taken on top of this waterfall that we saw earlier, the water literally just falls off the edge of the rock.
We did it! We hiked to the top of a waterfall with a 7.5 month old baby.
On the way back down the mountain, we had a great conversation about how we want to raise Adele and all the cool things we want to expose her to as she grows up. Over the past year, we’ve encountered a lot of naysayers who told us that we’d never be able to travel once we had a baby, and it made us proud to look around at where we were on that trail to say “Yes. We have a baby. And we’re traveling. We’re doing it!”
PS. Icicles and Cactus on the same trail? This place is crazy.
Zion definitely impressed us. We had a blast. It was so nice to get out of Los Angeles and into nature. It was only 7 hours away, but it felt like a whole different world there. So what’s next? Yellow Stone? Kings Canyon? We’re already scheming our next National Park adventure.
TRIP DETAILS:
Hotel: Desert Pearl Inn
Restaurants: Wildcat Willies, Zion Lodge: Red Rock Grill, Oscar’s Cafe
Hikes We Did: Riverside Walk, Lower Emerald Pool Trail, The Grotto Trail, Pa’rus Trail, Canyon Overlook, Upper Emerald Pool Trail
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Sleep: Third Night’s the Charm January 25, 2013
So I promised you some more details on what it’s like to share a perfectly nice hotel room with a 7.5 month old baby. Here’s the short story: it’s rough. We usually LOVE nice hotel rooms. I’ve been spoiled over the years with big King beds, fluffy duvet comforters and luxurious bathrooms. (Thankfully my husband is “Mr. Hotel Deal Finder” so we usually don’t shell out the full price). But having a baby makes it into a whole different experience. We did overnight trips in hotel rooms when she was 6 weeks old (Palm Springs), 7 weeks old (Avila Beach) and 8 weeks old (Yosemite), and those trips were a breeze. Feed the baby and rock her to sleep. Done. But now that she’s older, it’s a whole different game.
Adele, like most babies, thrives on routine. She naps twice a day and goes to bed at 7:30p. At our house, she has a pitch black room, total silence and a familiar crib mattress. In our hotels this trip, almost all of her sleep cues were absent. We brought her lovey and pacifier so that part of her routine would be the same, but it didn’t really help. The room was brighter, her Pack N’ Play is smaller and squishier than the crib and every little noise we made reminded her that we were in the room and she didn’t want to miss out on any fun.
SCENE 1: The first night in our St. George hotel (Inn at Entrada) we set up the Pack N’ Play next to our bed on the far side of the room. We shut off as many lights as we could and we tried to rock her to sleep (a rare treat nowadays). She’d close her eyes, but never really fall into a deep sleep. As soon as we’d lie her down, she’d wake up and start screaming again. We tried for a couple of hours, and finally she fell asleep. Then she woke up every two hours for a half hour each time. It was brutal. We were both frustrated, but we felt bad for her at the same time. Poor baby. Somewhere around 3a-4a we gave up and brought her into bed with us. We all ended up sleeping in til 9a after that, so part of our sleep was redeemed.
SCENE 2: The second night, in our Zion Hotel (The Desert Pearl) we had a different plan. Our bathroom was huge and had a separate vanity area, so we set the Pack N’ Play up in there. It would be dark, quiet and away from Mom and Dad. We thought if she had her own “room”, she’d drift off into La La Land. We tried laying her down in there, but she screamed each time. I ended up rocking her to sleep and she slept blissfully from 8p-10:30p. And juuuuust as we were turning off our light to go to sleep ourselves, she woke up crying. We surrendered and brought the lucky lady into bed with us. She was satisfied to be with her two favorite people and stretched out and fell asleep horizontal to us (bed hogger!) We all slept in again til 8:30a or so. (If you’re keeping track, that’s 10 hours of sleep!) I swear, I actually sleep more since having a baby. Needless to say, our bed sharing was a hotel-room success.
SCENE 3: Night three, we finally learned our lesson. We didn’t even try to put her in the Pack N’ Play. Around 8pm, we turned off all the lights, I rocked her to sleep in my arms, and gently laid her down in the middle of our big comfy bed. Irving played on his laptop and I read my book on my kindle while our daughter snoozed in between us. She continued to stay fast asleep til 8a the next morning. All three of of us had a tear-free and restful sleep. It was so nice.
PS. Ever wonder what it’s like to be woken up by a happy 7.5 month old baby in the morning? It looks sorta like this:
Haha, seriously, that’s what it looks like. She’s all like “Heeey, Mom! Give me some milk! And also, I will claw your nose and pull off your glasses.” Heh.
Our first night back at home, I was so worried that she wouldn’t sleep well. I was mentally prepared to start sleep training all over again (roughly three nights of a modified cry-it-out method), but Adele surprised us. We laid her down in her crib awake and she fell asleep immediately! No tears! No rocking! She woke up once around 1am, we popped the pacifier backed in and she was back out again. Every single night since then, she’s fallen asleep immediately and slept 12 hours straight through the night. Whaaaaat? I can’t believe we took her out of her routine for three nights and she still bounced right back immediately. That girl is amazing. I must have sleep angels watching over me. They haven’t failed me yet!
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