Travel is Stressful When You Are Almost One

Madeline is a pretty good traveler.  She doesn't mind the car, even for long trips.

But she does find sleeping in new places hard.  We left NY bright and early yesterday morning and all was well.  We arrived at Bubbe Forman's house a little after 1pm and gave her a bottle and tried to put her down for a nap.  She was having none of it.  We figured it was the lack of any sort of crib and the overall excitement of the day.

But things did not improve when we arrived at our hotel a little after 7:30pm (after dinner with Zeyde and Uncle Craig).  She had her bottle but had less than no interest in sleeping the in the Pack and Play in this strange place.  She cried and cried, which she almost never does.  Finally I laid down on the bed with her.  Which worked, except I feel asleep too.  When I woke up and tried to extricate myself she woke up and started crying again.  The only answer was to let her sleep with us.  Ugh.  Bad, bad night for Mommy and Daddy, though Madeline seemed happy as a pig in you-know-what.

The good news is that as I type this in the hotel biz center she is upstairs in the Pack and Play.  She wasn't napping when I left, but she also wasn't crying.  This bodes well for tonight.

I think next time we come up I am going to plan to come to the hotel first and give her time to play and acclimate.  Once the surroundings feel a little familiar she seems to do okay.  I think we would have saved ourselves a bad night if we'd planned a little better.  Preston disagrees with this theory.  We'll see.

In any event, travel is stressful for babies.  They don't know where they are or why and you can't explain it to them.  And they can't explain to you how they feel.

But we are here and ready for a turkey feast!  We are going to give her tastes of everything today, so it should be a treat for all.

Happy Thanksgiving!