vacation: over

Last week was our first official summer beach vacation with Rachel. Wow. Taking a baby on vacation is a lot of work. In fact, I think Jarrad and I have a new appreciation for how much work our parents had to do to make our vacations happen. When we have experiences like this, we are often amazed to think about families with 4 or 5 children...how do they do it? I've always wanted a house full of children. If that is what the Lord has in store for us, and if I can manage to keep blogging, I guess we'll all find out how it happens!

Jarrad and I had originally planned to come home tonight, Monday night, but we decided to come home yesterday afternoon. Aunt Katie rode home with us, which was fun, since we don't get to see her much. However, we decided to leave in the afternoon instead of following our usual don't-take-a-car-trip-longer-than-two-hours-before-Rachel's-bedtime rule. Unfortunately, we failed to consider that our trip would be falling at the end of the weekend following the week of July 4th, when EVERYONE is at the beach. What should be a 3-hour trip turned into 4.5 hours, and Rachel, who slept peacefully for the first 1.5 hours, was completely distressed by the time we got home. And so was I. I rode in the backseat with her, and tried to entertain her. She went back and forth from being content to being hungry to being fussy to being sleepy to being downright mad. I felt so sorry for her, poor baby.

It was really nice to have an extra day at home, though. Jarrad's still technically on vacation, and we decided to continue vacating. We napped when Rachel napped, and we gave ourselves a free pass to relax. This afternoon, we went to the mall and walked around, and Rachel went to bed around 8:15pm (we've been pushing the time back bit by bit, and it seems like it might be working...maybe).

Progress Report

This week turned out to be such a great potty week. Rachel seems to be motivated again, and she is more consistently telling us when she needs to go, having a dry diaper, and then cooperatively sitting down and going. She acts proud of herself, and she seems to look forward to her reward (jumping up and down) and saying "bye bye, peepee" as we watch it flush down the toilet. She even went potty at the mall tonight (I bought her an On the Go Potty) I'm not getting my hopes up, though, as I anticipate more setbacks like the many we've had in our 5-month journey so far.

cute sad moment

This is the saddest cute moment I've ever reported. On the loooong trip home, strapped-down Rachel went through 5 to 10-minute stretches when all she did was look at me, whimpering, with sad, watery eyes and a frown, signing "help, please, help, please, help, please." It broke my heart.

non-toy toy of the day

Rachel is more in love with shoes than ever before. She has begun acting like the queen of shoes, even at times demanding that we remove our shoes in her presence. When we take them off for her, she often just looks at them and continues playing with something else, as if she just wants to have the option of playing with the shoes. Crocs are her favorites. There were lots of Crocs at the beach, and Rachel took turns "wearing" them as she pranced around the condo or on the beach. Jarrad's Uncle Billy gave her the nickname, "Croc." (Incidentally, Uncle Billy played football at NC State, where his nickname was "peahead," because he wore the smallest helmet on the team.)