The Road Less Traveled

Traveling with an infant is challenging. Not just the travel part but getting everything prepared for the traveling too. I see why it is easier to just stay home! Somehow we managed to pull it together for Eloise's first road trip. Tom's family has a christmas gathering every year at the Wisconsin Dells. Normally about a 3.5 hour drive from our house...it was more like 5 hours this year. However Tom and I gave his younger sister Lani a ride so we had plenty to talk about! The weekend wore me out. Not having the luxuries of home like a rocking chair and a nursery to go to in the middle of the night was not easy. Overall we had a good time and Eloise was able to meet a bunch of relatives. I managed to take some photos but they don't quite capture the saturday night celebration. Family skits, holiday songs, little kids opening presents, drunken relatives, it was quite the night.

Why the additional 1.5 hours of road tripping you ask? Well, we had to stop to feed Eloise and for things like this, Eloise getting her diaper changed in the front seat by Tom & Aunt Lani. Of course she blew out of her diaper and had to have her entire outfit changed. This happened on the way there and on the way back. Tom and Lani had it taken care of and I was glad to be in the back seat at this point :) Oh and we were at a random gas station so changing her in the car seemed like the best option.


Below photo is a bit graphic with a real poopy diaper shown... I'm sure she'll love this photo when she's older.



Eloise "talking" with her great aunt Marsha.


Waving for the camera.


Dad and Eloise. She looks so tiny here but is not feeling that way anymore!


Mom and Eloise. I love the backside of the outifit "my first christmas"


Family photo with all eyes open!



Eloise has been continuing to babble. Yesterday Tom woke me up to listen to her on the monitor. It was the first time she woke up just talking to herself and not crying. It was so cute I didn't mind that it was 5:30am and I should have been sleeping for as many minutes as possible... She is also working on her neck strength and really trying to hold her head up. It's fun to watch her become interested in her playmat thingy (I can't remember what this is actually called). Another milestone, I decided today that we are officially done with newborn sized diapers (wipe away the tears) and moving to the 8-12 pound size.

Having fun...



Thinking "mom, enough with the photos!"


Lots of fun when dad plays too.


Working on holding up her head in her bumbo seat or as Tom calls it, her bumble bee chair.



And last but not least, I finally figured out how to get a video on here. This file was too large so after finding some program online I somehow managed to convert it to a smaller file but the quality is not great and the video seems a little distorted...but after all that work I'm posting it anyway! For the future, I will keep my videos shorter so I can upload the original files!

Presenting: Conversations with Eloise - 7 weeks
(this is for the seriously committed, it's almost 5 minutes long)