Day One

So we finished Day One of our drive to the Midwest. The kids did phenomenally well. After our trip to Niagara Falls this past April I was a little worried....particularly about Jake. This is a totally random comparison but today reminded me of when he was in the hospital for jaundice when he was a newborn. Approximately a day or so after we brought him home from the hospital he was admitted to the pediatric ward to spend 36 hours under the bili-lights. For those of you unfamiliar with that scenario you essentially put your child in a tanning bed with some soft cloth "goggles" over his or her eyes and let them absorb the light. I was worried because the light is bad for the baby's eyes and they're very hard to keep on because, well, THEY'RE ON BABIES! But Jake did a fantastic job. Once you put the goggles on him and put him in the incubator he would lay perfectly still until it was time to nurse. Then I would take him out and he would move around a lot while he nursed and then the second you put him back in he would fall asleep again. He was fantastic. That's sort of how today went. He napped THREE times today. And he played with the Nintendo DS for a total of 30 seconds and only watched one movie (which he didn't even finish) while we drove for 12 hours. It was amazing. HE was amazing. He really came through for us and I can only hope he does as well tomorrow and on the way home next week.

After we left the rest area where we stopped for lunch we had a little less than four hours left of driving. It should have been less but about half of Pennsylvania is under construction and we were down to one lane with a whole bunch of semi-trucks. Hannah fell asleep right after lunch and finally I got Jake interested in watching a movie. He was actually doing pretty good playing by himself but I was afraid he would get antsy so I set up a Star Wars movie on the DVD player. We had a brief moment of panic after lunch, while he was watching his movie, when he said he was going to throw up again but after a few dry heaves over the bucket he conked out for his third nap of the day. He stayed asleep until we stopped for gas 20 miles from our destination.

The hotel that we're staying in is very nice. It's a newly renovated Hampton Inn. We went out to dinner at a local Mexican restaurant and now Lincoln is down at the pool trying to wear the kids out before bed time. As soon as I finish this post I'll head down to join them.

Tomorrow morning we'll hit the road around 8 a.m. We only have an 11-hour drive tomorrow to get to Madison but with the time change we gain an hour. The only thing that might slow us up is if we hit Chicago during rush hour. Hopefully the kids will do as well tomorrow as they did today.