Whew. For the fourth time since Graeme came into the world, I have packed three people and a dog for a trip. One of those people requires much more stuff to leave the house long-term!
Tomorrow after church, we are headed on a week-long trip that's half business, half pleasure.
We will drive to Sevierville, TN tomorrow afternoon to spend three nights visiting my grandparents in the beautiful Smoky Mountains. Graeme will get his first "camping" experience. I put it in quotes because we will be staying in an air-conditioned cabin with all of the comforts of home plus a hot tub. No complaints here.
He will get some camping exposure like fires and cooking outdoors. My parents will be there too, so we are also in for some major Graeme-spoiling. He will be with four grandparents and he's everyone's first grandchild/great-grandchild.
On Wednesday afternoon, we will leave Penny with Mimi and Grandy (she will hitch a ride home to Raleigh with them at the end of the week), and the three of us will head on to Murfreesboro, TN for Aaron's coaching network retreat. It's about a three hour drive from where my grandparents live, but it puts us in Central Time. I'm thinking that since we will only be there two nights, I will keep Graeme on Eastern Time. We'll see how it goes.
Aaron is a coach for INFUSE this time, and we will be staying in the home of our lovely hosts. We were going to stay until Saturday morning and then make the almost 10-hour drive (add 3-4 hours extra considering baby) all in one day. I started to think about this last week and realized we were basically crazy for considering this.
Aaron will have to be at Journey all day on Sunday next week, and a 15-hour-drive the day before sounded like a nightmare.
I began to think through a new plan, and it took me and some friends to convince Aaron that this was a much better idea...
We are going to leave Murfreesboro Friday night at Graeme's bedtime and make it to Asheville. There is a conference center right off of 40 called Ridgecrest that gives pastors a discounted rate to stay at their hotel (we have been there before with students). Our friend Joe reminded us of this, and it will save us like $100 bucks by not having to get a hotel room somewhere else. We will spend the night there, and then be able to drive the remaining five hours home on Saturday at a much more leisurely pace.
This plan makes me feel much less dread for our return trip. Graeme does great in the car, but we have experienced him reaching his breaking point, and it's not fun. He would be miserable in his carseat for 10 hours. Who wouldn't be?!
So, that's what we're up to this next week.
This past week has been busy tying up things to leave town. Work, family time, and sleep pretty much sums up our life right now. There isn't much time for anything extracurricular right now. We will all be glad for a little vacation away from Raleigh.
Graeme is amazing, per usual. I cannot believe that he will be five months old next Saturday. He's just one month away from being a half a year old. Crazy.
He is sleeping so wonderfully lately. We don't hear a peep out of him until just before 7am. Our goal as soon as we get home from TN and get settled again is to wean him of his dream feed. Part of me wonders if he would even miss it right now, but I'm scared to drop it cold turkey! I have made it earlier and decreased the amount, so he's been going from 9:30pm-7:00am with no waking up. We don't want to make a drastic change on him before we drag him from place to place to place next week, so we'll wait to worry with that later.
He still loves his oatmeal that he gets during two of his daytime feedings. Another goal for when we get back is to introduce some other foods. Not sure what yet. Not sure how exactly either. I want to make my own baby food. I bought a book to read. We'll see how that goes too.
Well, I hope to get something posted during our trip. Here's a picture of this cutie, because a blog post isn't as good without at least one picture of Graeme...
Aaron and I have a wall of clocks going up the steps in our house. There are seven clocks, of all shapes and sizes. We decided that instead of having seven clocks telling time and wasting money on batteries forever (who goes to the steps to look at the time anyway?), we would set the hands on each clock to a certain date that had meaning for us.
Four of the clocks hold our families birth dates (10:13, 10:29, 3:23, and 7:08). One is our anniversary (6:11). One is the day Aaron asked me to start dating him (11:02). And the last one is our engagement day (8:08).
Well, "8:08" stands for August 8th, which is today! Five years ago, Aaron proposed to me after nine months of dating. I had been in Tennessee with my family the entire week before, and while I was gone, he planned out an elaborate day. I won't take the time to tell the story, but it's one of my favorite ones. Right after it happened, Aaron and I started a blog and wrote out the story of our whole engagement day from both of our perspectives. You can read it starting here.
I remember thinking on that day, after I promised to love Aaron forever, that one year before I had been very single with not the slightest idea of a boyfriend. So much can change in just one year.
And so much more can change in five years!
Aaron, I love you! Being married to you is my greatest joy and the most fun adventure. Thanks for giving me a ring five years ago...and for not dropping it in the water on accident.
I'm finding that the blog gets picked almost last for "things I want/need to do when I have time." I guess what it is is that I have to be relaxed and baby-free (or baby-asleep) to write well. If Graeme is asleep, but the house needs to be picked up or something else like that, I'm not relaxed. By the end of the day, when Aaron's home from his increasingly long work days and we can get Graeme asleep and eat dinner and take showers...it's also the last thing I can bring myself to do. Hence, the blog sits.
Today, the house is clean, the laundry is put away, and the baby is sound asleep. So, here I am.
Another look into my weird brain: I have mentioned that I cleaned on Tuesdays. As Graeme gets older, he doesn't sleep as long during the day, and it was becoming increasingly difficult for me to finish cleaning everything while he was here. I tossed around moving cleaning day to Mondays and letting my mom keep him a little longer just so it could be done for the week, and therefore allow me to totally focus on him when he was here on Tuesdays. Even though no one cared but me and this is anything but a big decision, it took me a long time to decide this and change my cleaning day. I am so strange.
It's a bit hectic around here as of late. Aaron is in a new season at work that is temporarily taking a lot of his time. A lot of it. I can't complain at all, because he makes time for me and Graeme despite having so much to do. His team at Journey are some of my heroes. They help him with anything and everything and make sure he is home when he needs to be home. We guard Fridays and Saturdays as much as possible and keep them as family days.
What else is new?
Graeme is pretty much cuter every day. I told you we got some family pictures taken at the beach. They are on Facebook, but here are a few of my favorites:
We gave him cereal for the first time last week. You're supposed to make it really runny at first, so I think he liked it, but it kept falling out of his mouth. After a few days of making sure it didn't mess up his tummy, I made it a thicker consistency. The kid devoured it. He got so excited as the spoon came closer. He likes it a lot. The doctor told us to follow his lead with food, and he may be eating several things by the time he comes for his six-month visit. We will stick with the cereal for now as I gear up to attempt making my own baby food.
I'll end this post with another crazy mom story:
Graeme has been doing excellent with sleeping through the night. He sleeps about 12 hours with a quick dream feed still. We hardly ever hear him until morning now. Last night, I didn't hear him, but for some reason I woke up around 3am. I checked my phone to see the time, then looked at the video monitor. It took a second for my groggy eyes to figure out why Graeme looked funny. HE'S ON HIS TUMMY! I freaked out and ran across the hall to him. In my over-reaction, I picked him up to be sure he was breathing and of course woke him from what was probably a super-comfortable sleep. I felt bad, but he went right back to sleep. It took me awhile to come off my adrenaline high. I've heard from many people, including the nurses at the hospital, that once they can roll themselves like that, you shouldn't worry with flipping them back over. Next time he rolls his way onto his tummy, I suppose I'll leave him to it. After all, I sleep like that and it's definitely the most comfortable way to sleep!
