A Family Vacation

(I am well aware that this post is a couple of weeks late but Ms. No Naps McGee has made it hard to blog lately!  Please forgive me.)


Over Fall Break we took a trip to San Diego with Lemon, my mom and my step-dad, Joe, and we met my step-brother, also Joe, and my niece Amanda there.  We had an amazing time, Lemon was an awesome traveler (although a normally 5 hour car ride took about 7 with stops to feed/change) and it was a nice break from the routine of being at home.  And, before we left our girlie gave us the gift of 8 straight hours of sleep, it was AWESOME! 

We got to San Diego about 5pm and then the family met us at our hotel (where we reserved our same room that we always have when we stay on Coronado but had a different room the first night because they made a mistake).  We walked to our favorite burger place and then went to bed, to get ready for our big day at the zoo the next day!

I will narrate our trip through pictures since, again, this baby may or may not stay asleep today!  :)

(If you know my husband, you know that he LOVES being outside, animals and his family so he absolutely loves zoos.  Here we are, in the parking lot, getting ready to go on our Backstage Pass tour of the San Diego Zoo!)

 (Whoa boobs!  My mom won this tour for 4 from American Express so she let Ian, me, my step-brother and niece go while she and Joe watched Lemon!)

 (Fed the babe, in the only shady spot there that someone had to unlock for me, sad goodbye and then sat down and waited for the show!)

(The cutest porcupine in the world.)

(She is nice so she doesn't put her quills up but if she did, this is what they would look like.) 

(I forgot what this guy was, some kind of bear.)

(Waiting to feed a rhino.)

(Guys, it was SO gross.)

(Kangaroo friend but I wasn't very impressed.  When I went to Australia in 2000 you can go to sanctuaries where you open and shut a gate and are literally in with hundreds of kangaroos that you can just walk up and pet.  By the way, kangaroo pouches are gross, in case you've never seen one in real life.)

 

(The wolf howling when the audience howls, SO COOL!)  

(This is how close we were!)  

(We pet this guy!  He was super soft, see below.)  

(This cheetah and this dog are best friends.  Imagine being a shelter dog, then adopted and put in to live with a cheetah.  It supposedly gives the cheetah confidence.  They seriously live together, how cool is that?!  The cheetah even acts like a dog!) 

(See our professional pic below where only the zookeeper, me and Ian are looking at the camera!) 

(step and repeat) 

(It was unseasonably HOT in San Diego the whole time we were there.  My mom and I bought Lemon all sorts of warm clothes to wear and she didn't end up wearing any of them!) 

(I was tired after the 3 hour Backstage Pass tour, but daddy wanted to walk around and look at everything so we went with!) 

 (This baby stayed awake almost the entire day, with only an hour nap on her Nani.  She was so good, didn't cry except when she was hungry and I was walking to meet my mom after our tour.  She is the best baby and was so tuckered out that night she went to bed at 6 and slept 8 hours straight at the hotel!  We set up the monitor and sat outside, ate and drank while she slept, it was a lovely night.)

(The next morning we all woke up early to head to Silver Strand Beach, on Coronado Island, where we stay, to collect shells.  This is the first pic of Lemon at the beach - she was SO tired!) 

 

 (We found absolutely no shells, even though this is usually the best shell beach, so we headed to Coronado beach to see if we'd have better luck.)

(And it was HOT even at 9am.  It was the first time, even in summer there, where I didn't need my hat!) 

(So many shells, I'm obsessed.) 

(And after our beach walk we did our signature nap time but this time, Lemon napped with us!  I think we all slept for about 3 hours, it was awesome.  She sure knows how to vacation, just like her mom and dad!)

We woke up really late, around 2 or 3 I think, but still wanted to head to the beach.  So, we got lunch at our little grocery across the street, got everything ready (and realized that all three of us forgot to pack our bathing suits!) and headed off to Coronado beach again.

(It was really hot so we put up our umbrella and snapped some pics.)

(Her first hoody pic, it was windy in the shade.) 

(Daddy just HAD to stick her feet in the super cold ocean and she immediately started crying!  That was when we lost her . . .) 

(From then on she was a mad, mad baby.  So much for a relaxing day at the beach!  After a couple of hours we headed back to the hotel.)

 (That night my mom and Joe came to our hotel to watch the baby while we went out to dinner.  We tried a fish place on the island and it was good, and they had a gluten free menu, although I'm pretty sure I was glutened.  But, it was nice being out with just my lover, it had been way too long!)

(And Ian got to have cioppino - his favorite!)

That night the baby slept pretty good, if I remember correctly, and we headed home the next day!  It was a great trip and we had so much fun hanging with family and just being together with the babe.  Ian had the whole next week off for Fall Break, when we got home, and by the end of the week I just didn't want him to go back to work.  Wouldn't it be great if we found a way for both of us to stay home?  It is just so much easier, and much more fun, with two people!  We both really liked having him around.

The trip also taught me a few things about being a mom.  It taught me to be flexible.  Lemon didn't nap at her normal times, she was out all day long the first day, she was stuck in the car for 7 hours (with lots of breaks but still) and she and I both learned flexibility.  I'm sure it's something that 2nd time moms are really good at but something us first timers don't get to practice very often.  Lemon has been on a schedule for a couple of months now so it was nice to change it up and see how she, and I, would do - and we survived!  It also taught me not to worry so much.  I knew we were going to be at the zoo all day and was worried how she would be, overly tired, and what if she cried?  She also never naps while we are out and about so I wondered how she would do being awake all day.  And guess what?  She was just fine and I worried for nothing.  I also wondered how she would sleep in the hotel room with it not being her normal environment but she adapted, just like us.  She even vacationed like us, early bed times and big long napes.  It just goes to show you that babies are incredible beings, they do well even in unpredictable, new situations.  She was so so good on our trip and all of my worrying was for nothing.  I guess I learned not to worry so much too!  Thanks Mom and Joe for a great trip, Ian was definitely in heaven seeing all of those animals up close!  We love you!

When we got home we decided, since her schedule was off anyway, to transition her to her crib in the nursery, from the cosleeper in our room, and see how she would do.  We also tried for an earlier bed time since while were were gone she went to bed between 6-7 but her normal bed time at home was 8-8:30.  How did all of this go?  Well you'll just have to wait for my 4 Month post to find out!  Stay tuned!  (<--- I feel like I'm always saying that, but I mean it!)