Our first road trip was wonderful. We found out that Mark is an excellent traveller. He pretty much slept the whole way there, or sat contently smiling away. We stopped once to feed him (actually I sat in the back feeding him while he was in his car seat and Mike continued driving).
When we got there, he charmed our friends. He loved to snuggle with Joy, and give her smiles and lots of love. Hopefully the baby luck will rub off on her and she'll get the call soon! Joy and I let Jeremy hold him for a little while, and even Daddy got to hold him a tiny bit. He was so comfortable in Joy's arms, he fell asleep.
Joy and I taught the guys about the finer art of changing a wet diaper in the back of a car. There weren't any changing tables, so we improvised. Joy and Jeremy gave Mark the cutest layette set- he's going to take a picture in it soon. It has sailboats and cars (Mommy and Daddy's favorites) as well as planes. Perfect for the kid who is going to travel quite a bit!
When we left, I sat in the back of the car to give him a bottle again. By the time we got to a gas station to fill up, he was finished. And he slept the whole way home. He was a perfect little boy.
That's great to know, for when we take our long road trip! (hopefully soon!)
Showing posts with label road trip. Show all posts
Showing posts with label road trip. Show all posts
Sunday, January 06, 2008
Friday, January 04, 2008
two weeks
We've been in this hotel room two weeks now. We sure are glad that we got a suite. That way we can have a little more room to move around and keep sleeping in one area and daytime activities in the other. Little Mark is doing well, we're teaching him between bedroom (pack n play) and living room (papasan) too :) His favorite place to sleep is on Mommy and one of his favorite places to just chill and hang out is in daddy's arms. He's a good little boy. Next week we will be taking him for a pedi appointment, and we suspect he probably has hit the 7lb mark by now. Tomorrow we are going on a little trip to meet a friend of mine and her husband. Mark can't wait to meet her!
Thursday, December 20, 2007
No one said it was going to be easy, they just said it was going to be worth it.
That is a motto that we have been living by, and it is oh so true.
As for the road trip part, things are going well. We left a bit later than planned (but we wanted to tie up some loose ends, make sure the house was in ok enough order, and give Precious extra attention). We made it to West Memphis tonight, which is about 2/3 of the way. So we'll have a quick and easy day tomorrow.
Cell phone coverage was spotty sometimes, which didn't help much. We need to retain a lawyer in I for the ICPC (Interstate Compact for the Placement of Children) portion of the adoption. And it's not as easy as we thought it was going to be.
We fully expect to probably have to stay in I until the beginning of the new year. And we are prepared to do that, have the vacation time, etc. (Lucky for Mike, he was using 2 weeks for this year, then in January his vacation starts over again). We made arrangements for the mail, deliveries, care of Precious, etc. We figured we'd probably stay in the hotel with the baby, gazing at him and pinching ourselves that he is ours! (It's cold and flu season, so we are going to be a bit particular as to where we take our newborn. We're not going to be overly protective parents, but that's just common sense).
However, we haven't been able to find a lawyer to help us. We were referred to two of them, but they are about 200 miles away from where we are headed and are unable to do it right now. One is going out of town, and the other can't do 200 miles on such short notice during the holidays (totally understandable!). They both recommended us to another one in town, but he's got too much on his plate as he ties up his activities for the year.
So we have the call out to one more and are waiting to hear from him. He runs an international adoption agency, but is a family lawyer and is familiar with the ICPC. So hopefully he can either 1. help represent us or 2. recommend someone local who might be able to.
As we are here in the hotel, one major project we have tonight is researching and looking to see if we can find any lawyers in town or the surrounding areas that might be educated in and able to work the ICPC for us. We purposely drove further today so that we'd be able to go meet someone tomorrow if we need to.
Baby boy has not been born yet. Now, we find out that potentially some steps need to be done (and one of the three involves some paperwork going before a judge) before we can leave the hospital with our son. That's not even leaving the state, but being able to have custody of him and take him to the hotel. The courts are open on Friday, but not all of them are open on Monday (some only half a day!) and of course they are not open on Tuesday. So, if baby boy doesn't make an appearance tonight for sure, or possibly this weekend (and also if we don't find a lawyer who will represent us) ifi he is born before Christmas he will spend it in the hospital. We should be able to visit him, just not take him back to the hotel with us.
So, we're a bit unsure if we want him to be born now, or to wait until Christmas, (where it'll be easier to get through the legal stuff in order to bring him to the hotel with us!)
We're keeping faith, as we know that everything happens for a reason. As well, things happen in due time. So, we are confident that things will work out the way they are supposed to.
Anyway, that's the update! We're keeping positive and can't wait to meet our son! As I packed his luggage I brought an outfit over to Mike, and we gazed at it, realizing that OUR SON is going to fit in this tiny little outfit. OUR SON. WOW.
Thanks for following along with us!
As for the road trip part, things are going well. We left a bit later than planned (but we wanted to tie up some loose ends, make sure the house was in ok enough order, and give Precious extra attention). We made it to West Memphis tonight, which is about 2/3 of the way. So we'll have a quick and easy day tomorrow.
Cell phone coverage was spotty sometimes, which didn't help much. We need to retain a lawyer in I for the ICPC (Interstate Compact for the Placement of Children) portion of the adoption. And it's not as easy as we thought it was going to be.
We fully expect to probably have to stay in I until the beginning of the new year. And we are prepared to do that, have the vacation time, etc. (Lucky for Mike, he was using 2 weeks for this year, then in January his vacation starts over again). We made arrangements for the mail, deliveries, care of Precious, etc. We figured we'd probably stay in the hotel with the baby, gazing at him and pinching ourselves that he is ours! (It's cold and flu season, so we are going to be a bit particular as to where we take our newborn. We're not going to be overly protective parents, but that's just common sense).
However, we haven't been able to find a lawyer to help us. We were referred to two of them, but they are about 200 miles away from where we are headed and are unable to do it right now. One is going out of town, and the other can't do 200 miles on such short notice during the holidays (totally understandable!). They both recommended us to another one in town, but he's got too much on his plate as he ties up his activities for the year.
So we have the call out to one more and are waiting to hear from him. He runs an international adoption agency, but is a family lawyer and is familiar with the ICPC. So hopefully he can either 1. help represent us or 2. recommend someone local who might be able to.
As we are here in the hotel, one major project we have tonight is researching and looking to see if we can find any lawyers in town or the surrounding areas that might be educated in and able to work the ICPC for us. We purposely drove further today so that we'd be able to go meet someone tomorrow if we need to.
Baby boy has not been born yet. Now, we find out that potentially some steps need to be done (and one of the three involves some paperwork going before a judge) before we can leave the hospital with our son. That's not even leaving the state, but being able to have custody of him and take him to the hotel. The courts are open on Friday, but not all of them are open on Monday (some only half a day!) and of course they are not open on Tuesday. So, if baby boy doesn't make an appearance tonight for sure, or possibly this weekend (and also if we don't find a lawyer who will represent us) ifi he is born before Christmas he will spend it in the hospital. We should be able to visit him, just not take him back to the hotel with us.
So, we're a bit unsure if we want him to be born now, or to wait until Christmas, (where it'll be easier to get through the legal stuff in order to bring him to the hotel with us!)
We're keeping faith, as we know that everything happens for a reason. As well, things happen in due time. So, we are confident that things will work out the way they are supposed to.
Anyway, that's the update! We're keeping positive and can't wait to meet our son! As I packed his luggage I brought an outfit over to Mike, and we gazed at it, realizing that OUR SON is going to fit in this tiny little outfit. OUR SON. WOW.
Thanks for following along with us!
The best road trip ever
As many people know, Mike and I love to travel two ways. One is cruise ships (I introduced him to that ;) ). And the 2nd way is to road trip. I've been road tripping all my life, it wasn't unusual for my parent to toss us in the back of the car on a weekend and take off to explore somewhere. We got to see tons of stuff, from Redwood trees to Plymouth Rock. And my love for road trips started there. As an adult in my twenties, I embarked on longer road trips, sometimes involving moves, once a trip to Clemson to see my sister play volleyball, sometimes trips to New Orleans to visit my other sister. I had to get away at least once every other month- even if it was just to go to a neighboring state, get out on the open road and stretch my "legs". I once went to visit a coworker in Dover, DE just because I wanted to hit the road. Mike is the same way. Before me, trips to Colorado were starting to become an annual event. He loved to get out on the open road in the miata. As we grew to know each other, we discovered we shared that love of road trips. And we've taken quite a few. In my quest to go to every state before I turn 40 (3 more to go!), we've taken several road trips (sometimes hitting 10 states in a week) where we drive all day. We jokingly call our 1st anniversary the Holiday Inn tour because we stayed at Holiday Inns in many different states.
Now, we are about to embark on the biggest road trip of our lives. The best road trip of our lives so far. The road trip where we go to meet our son. Wow. Our son. It's so wonderful to say that! We can't wait to meet him. So, as we head off for the first leg, we're hoping to hit Memphis in time for dinner. We're going to maximize our daylight as much as possible. Thanks for joining us on our journey, we're glad to have you along!
Now, we are about to embark on the biggest road trip of our lives. The best road trip of our lives so far. The road trip where we go to meet our son. Wow. Our son. It's so wonderful to say that! We can't wait to meet him. So, as we head off for the first leg, we're hoping to hit Memphis in time for dinner. We're going to maximize our daylight as much as possible. Thanks for joining us on our journey, we're glad to have you along!
Sunday, April 08, 2007
Our last child free road trip? And some practice...
Well, we just got back from a wonderful road trip. We decided to just get in the car and go. We had a loose idea as to where we were going (south Texas) but no certain plans. Our mission: to knock out as many Texas counties as we could. See, Mike's goal is currently to go to every Texas county. He's doing pretty well, but needed to have south Texas covered. So, since we always go somewhere for Easter, we thought, why not?
It was nice to get away for a bit. Not focus on anything adoption related, work related, or anything in particular. Basically, just the two of us on the open road. We wonder, will it be out last child free road trip?
We both traveled quite a bit as children with our families. I have fond memories of Mom and Dad piling us into the car for the weekend, as we hit the open road. One thing Mike and I insist on is doing the same with our family. We already love to road trip, and plan on continuing that when we have children.
Our car is big enough :) But we did discuss (and look at cars on the road we saw) what would happen if our family was a bit larger than we originally thought and we'd need third row seating. We know there are some great vehicles out there.
The Easter Bunny visited our hotel room. About 440 in the morning, the Easter Bunny hid chocolate eggs around the room, and left a cute Easter basket. Boy was Mike surprised when he woke up this morning :)
We plan on making road trips with our kids fun. We learned growing up that road trips can be both fun and educational, and we plan on following that path ourselves. Easter is always our holiday to travel as "our family". So, we figured we'd have fun with it this year. Hopefully next year we'll be hiding eggs for a kid or two or more :)
We are going to get some practice this weekend. On Sat we are going to go watch our 4 year old nephew's soccer game. Then, we are going to bring his 15 month old sister home with us to spend the night. A friend of ours is having a birthday party for her one year old on Sunday, and our niece was invited to attend. I'll take her home Monday, when her parents get off work. It will be nice to get some niece time in. She is such a sweetie, and we have everything she needs to be comfortable here in our house. We are looking forward to her visit.
It was nice to get away for a bit. Not focus on anything adoption related, work related, or anything in particular. Basically, just the two of us on the open road. We wonder, will it be out last child free road trip?
We both traveled quite a bit as children with our families. I have fond memories of Mom and Dad piling us into the car for the weekend, as we hit the open road. One thing Mike and I insist on is doing the same with our family. We already love to road trip, and plan on continuing that when we have children.
Our car is big enough :) But we did discuss (and look at cars on the road we saw) what would happen if our family was a bit larger than we originally thought and we'd need third row seating. We know there are some great vehicles out there.
The Easter Bunny visited our hotel room. About 440 in the morning, the Easter Bunny hid chocolate eggs around the room, and left a cute Easter basket. Boy was Mike surprised when he woke up this morning :)
We plan on making road trips with our kids fun. We learned growing up that road trips can be both fun and educational, and we plan on following that path ourselves. Easter is always our holiday to travel as "our family". So, we figured we'd have fun with it this year. Hopefully next year we'll be hiding eggs for a kid or two or more :)
We are going to get some practice this weekend. On Sat we are going to go watch our 4 year old nephew's soccer game. Then, we are going to bring his 15 month old sister home with us to spend the night. A friend of ours is having a birthday party for her one year old on Sunday, and our niece was invited to attend. I'll take her home Monday, when her parents get off work. It will be nice to get some niece time in. She is such a sweetie, and we have everything she needs to be comfortable here in our house. We are looking forward to her visit.
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