Alli's First Trip Via Airplane

This weekend we met a bunch of friends in Park City, Utah for a wonderful 3 days of skiing/snowboarding. Alli did great on the plane - I had heard from a friend to nurse her during take-off and landing so that her ears would pop while she fed. I did and she had no problem. On the way there, she fell asleep - right before we landed! So we got off the plane with Kim carrying *everything* and me carrying our dead-weight child. :) Lucky for me she's only 16 lbs. :) Then things really started to get interested...

We picked up our bags. 2 out of 3 anyway. The car seat didn't arrive. How the ??? Anyway, they gave us a loaner car seat and said maybe it would arrive with the next flight from Phoenix. (BTW, my ski boots were in with the carseat - doh!) So then we went to get our 4WD SUV that we reserved. Yay, that didn't work so well. See we arranged flights to maximize the car-rental. We had a friend from Florida (Wink) and two of his daughters (Grace and Ella), and a friend from South Carolina (Butcher) all ready to fit into our car. That's 7 of us - one in a car seat. So that took a while to straighten out, and we finally got a..... minivan. :( We were stylin'!!!

Well, so be it. Then we drove to the wonderful house where the rest of the crew finally gathered. All together for the weekend we had 17 adults and 12 kids. Whew! Alli was the youngest and Grace (from Florida) was the oldest at 8.

So here's what we found out as first-time travelers with kids. a) Don't forget the nightlights - especially if you are sleeping in the same room as your child! (We had to go run out and get some.) b) Your child's sleep cycle will probably be a bit weird. Yes, Alli would wake up and cry and not go back to sleep. This happened *every* night we were there. Funny thing though, as we would be up trying to calm Alli, we heard crying from other rooms with small kids as well. So most adults didn't get much sleep - and it wasn't from excessive partying like it used to be with the kidless ski trips! Other than that, I think we did well.

BTW, our sleepless nights? To try to prevent Alli from waking the whole house, we wound up nursing her to calm her down and then sleep in our bed with us. It was sorta fun, but we're a little worried about what kind of a week we're going to have now that we're home. She's *not* coming to bed with us here, and I'm not nursing her 3 times during the night!!!

Snow was not a fun thing for her. I guess it's because she can't really play in it yet. Her exposure to it was me dressing her all warm and taking her outside, then putting her bare hand in a snow bank. She just cried. Hmmmm... not the response I was looking for, but I guess that makes sense cause it was really cold!!! :) Maybe next year when she can play more...

And one more fun thing... Alli did crawl! :) She doesn't go very far crawling, about 2-3 leg pushes before she gets down on her belly to try to army crawl/reach, but she's moving - forward! It's been very exciting to watch. In fact even the single guys in the house were excited for her!

And one more first from this trip. Kim and I had our first night out together since Alli was born. Avis (our wonderful trip planner) had arranged babysitters so we could have an adult-only dinner out. This was the first time Kim and I had a sitter for the night. So we toasted - with 15 of our friends. :)