Our first trip as a Family of Four: The good, the bad, and the downright exhausting! PART I: THE BAD

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Kyla's first trip as a baby was an adventurous backpacking/scuba diving trip to Indonesia for three weeks when she was 10 months old. Now that we have two little rugrats, traveling seems to be 100% more daunting so we decided that little Jakey's first trip would be just a short skip and hop up the California coast to Monterey and Santa Cruz. As the title of this blog implies, there were good times, bad times, and inevitably when traveling with an infant and a toddler, some downright exhausting times. The good times were during the day, but I'll come to that later. It's nice to end on a positive note. I'll start with the bad times. These were at night, and as any parent reading this will guess, these coincide with the downright exhausting times too!

We were away for four actual nights. The first and last were spent half in the car driving there and back, and half in bed when we arrived. The middle two nights were spent in a motel in Santa Cruz. We decided to set off from home at 7pm, Jake's normal bedtime. We figured the four or so hour drive would be less stressful if he was asleep the whole time. Within about 15 minutes of setting off, he was snoozing. Win! Kyla's normal bedtime is 8pm so we were hoping that she'd go to sleep soon after. Nope. She stayed awake and then informed us that she had a poopie diaper and needed a nice new one. Gah! Jakey usually wakes up as son as the car stops, and sure enough, as soon as we stopped to change her in the back of my minivan, he woke up and was soon screaming the place down. It was the quickest diaper change ever and then we all rushed back into the car and started to drive. Within about 5 minutes he piped down and fell asleep. Phew! Kyla finally fell asleep around 9:30pm.

Once they were both asleep, we were able to relax and I finally had some "me time" checking Facebook on my iPhone! I was nervous as we rolled into the scruffy little town of Salinas to look for a motel. I dreaded getting the kids out of the car and into bed. What if they decided to be up for the rest of the night? We had a look at a room in Motel 6 and it had what we were looking for - beds that could easily be pushed up against the wall so that we could corral the kiddos in and stop them from falling out of bed. We quickly checked in while trying to avoid the pitbull that was barking angrily and pulling on the leash of its not-so-friendly-looking owner when anyone walked by - lovely! To my surprise, after only 30 minutes and adjusting time in the room, both Jakey and Kyla settled down to sleep around midnight and slept in until 6:30am. Not bad. The only tough part was that the bed made loud rustling noises whenever anyone moved an inch, so I had a sore neck in the morning from trying to stay still and not move for fear of waking Jake.

The following two nights were spent in a motel in Monterey. We pushed the beds together to make one giant bed. The hard part was that Jake always goes to bed at 7pm and Kyla always goes to bed at 8pm. That's hard to do when you're all in the same room. We decided to just keep Jake up later the first night, which resulted in his screaming himself to sleep at 8:30 due to sheer exhaustion. Kyla, on the other hand, lay in bed talking to herself until past 10:30pm, which was stressful. I thought she'd never get to sleep! Then my "fantastic little sleeper" Jakey, who never wakes in the night, decided that he would wake up twice to feed and then scream the place down until we finally got him to sleep by pacing the room with him. That's where the downright exhausting part comes into play!

The next night we decided to get him down earlier. That worked better, and Kyla was tired so fell asleep instantly. Yay! The only problem was that Jake woke up three times and screamed the place down that night. That baby is truly NOT a co-sleeper I guess!

On the fourth night, we drove home about bedtime and they both fell asleep. When we got home around 10:00pm, Kyla transferred into her crib easily but Jakey was wide awake, smiling and playing. I think he was super excited to be back home with all his toys and a soft carpet to crawl on. He was really tough to finally get to sleep 2 hours later. When Scott and I finally crawled into bed at midnight, we had that feeling of dread, knowing we'd be woken up by Jakey screaming for us in a couple of hours time. You can imagine how surprised and pleased we were when I heard him on the monitor and realized that he'd slept through to 7am! The real test would be the subsequent nights at home. Would he continue to wake up for feedings, as Kyla had done for two months after Indonesia? Well, we are now on night three and so far, so good. Phew! I think we are back on track!

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Comments

[Michelle Mortensen]

Fun to Read
Sharon, It is very fun to read your travel blog. It is difficult to travel with little ones. You & Scott are very brave! I look forward to your next installment: The Good... Best, Michelle