The Continuing Saga of the Elusive Nap

So I really wanted to maintain this blog enough to do at least one post per month.  I'm not entirely sure I've managed to do that, but I'm not giving up yet.  This past week has actually been okay, which is why I now have a moment to do a posting.

Last week was not so great.  Elijah has not been a good sleeper since we stopped swaddling him and we finally got to the point where we had to teach him to put himself to sleep.  I hated it and I still feel guilty about it but we had gone weeks without anyone (including him) getting any sleep during the day or at night.  I had even tried several ways to prop myself up and hold him at night so that we could sleep like that, but he would only sleep for a couple of hours and then wake back up, crying and driving everyone crazy.  So he was crying all night anyway.  And of course I'm saying all of this to justify my decisions because I still feel terrible for letting him fuss until he learned to put himself to sleep.  But that's what we ended up doing.  He wasn't crying the whole time or anything but he was fussing or at least making noise.  Mike stayed with him because I couldn't handle it and we didn't want him to be left all alone.

So he finally did learn to put himself to sleep and now, generally, at night I nurse him and he goes down and goes right to sleep without any crying or fussing of any kind and then usually sleeps straight through until 5 or 6 in the morning when he wakes up and needs to nurse.  I nurse him and put him back down and he goes back to sleep until about 7.  I think he's used to waking up at that time because Mike always gets up and Nickel gets up and clomps around and wakes him up anyway, so even if we don't get up then, Elijah's internal alarm clock is set for 7.  Oh well.  I can get up at 7, no big deal.

So the night sleep was going better and he's sitting up by himself now and he's even starting to try and crawl.  In fact, I'm sure it will only be another week or two before he is crawling all over the place.  Which means that he really needs to nap during the day and you would think with the night sleep all hunky dory that naps would follow.  But last week I nearly had a nervous breakdown because the naps kept getting shorter and shorter until they were pretty much non-existent.  First we were doing three mini-naps (anywhere from 30 - 45 minutes) and I was like, "Okay, this sucks, but whatever, at least he's napping some."  Then he started refusing to take the third mini-nap, which meant that he had to be up for like 5 or 6 hours between his mid-afternoon nap to bedtime.  So, naturally, he was insanely cranky by the time Mike would get home.  And I'm like, "Okay, this sucks worse but I guess I can deal with it."  Then finally last Friday he refuses to nap AT ALL.  I got him to sleep for 15 minutes in my arms and then later for 20 minutes in his crib.  And, of course, the rest of the day he's Cranky Von Whinypants because he's so friggin tired!

Part of the reason was this on-again, off-again cough that he's had for months.  But of course his doctor's office is like "too bad, so sad" because if he doesn't have a fever apparently they think a 2 month cough is no big deal.  And there is nothing you can give a child this young just to dry up his snot so he can stop coughing and go to sleep.  Seriously?  It's freaking 2011!

But that was last week.  This week we have managed to have some decent days.  Monday and Tuesday he took two hour and a half naps each, one in the morning and one in the afternoon.  I thought I was going to have to throw a parade.  Then yesterday he napped for an hour and 20 minutes in the morning, but only 35 minutes in the afternoon.  So I'm thinking, "Well, it was fun while it lasted, back to insano-world."  Now he's been napping for about an hour and 20 minutes.  I had to put him down an hour earlier than normal because he's was being so cranky, which kind of pushes back all of his sleep-times but I don't mind because I'm supposed to go somewhere tonight and I was going to try to get him to bed earlier than normal so that Mike's mom can just come over and watch our TV while he sleeps.  Please pray that he does sleep while she's here tonight.

Anyway, I don't know whether to be hopeful that the good naps we've had the past few days continue or just assume this is my reprieve before my life goes back to crazytown.  And, really, I feel guilty for even complaining about it since there are people who I know deal with things way worse than a kid who won't nap.  But it isn't simply about me wanting a break from him, it's also the fact that we can't do anything fun the rest of the day because he's so fussy from being tired.  On the days he has napped well we've taken walks outside in the stroller and played in his bedroom and read books and laughed at the silly dog just walking around the house.  I want to say, "See, kid!  See how much better you feel when you nap like Mommy's been telling you to!"  But, of course, I'd just receive a bunch of nonsense babble and a little hand trying to pull off my glasses again.

Word.

Valentine's Day: The Scariest Day of the Year

So I was going to blog about how things seem to be looking up.  I was going to say that I found a way to get Elijah to go to sleep in his crib out of my arms for somewhere between 45 minutes to an hour and a half.  I was going to say how I used the same technique to put him to bed at 7:30 at night and how some nights he sleeps in his crib without waking until midnight or one o'clock.

But, of course, as soon as that happens, something else happens to mess it up. *sigh* Such is life.  I had started doing this psuedo-swaddle that was helping him to sleep in the crib for longer stretches, at least 45 minutes at a time.  Basically I would nurse him until he got sleepy, switch the boob for the pacifier, then wrap a blanket really tight around him so that when I lay him down, his arms don't go flying up and rub his face and wake himself up.  And sometimes it would even keep him from waking up at the 30 minute mark.  He's actually taken hour and half naps, praise Jesus.  (No, seriously!)  So here I was thinking "wow, what will I do with all this TIME?"  I could unload the dishwasher without him screaming for me to come pick him up.  I could use the bathroom without having to try for the championship award for world's fastest pee-er.  I could even EXERCISE for heaven's sake and get rid of this extra 15 pounds I need to lose.

But, alas, then Monday night occurred.  Monday, as you all know, was Valentine's Day.  I'm not a huge V-Day person so it wasn't that big of a deal to me that Mike went out of town for work and wasn't going to be back until Wednesday night, at least no bigger a deal than it normally is.  But, of course, that's the day Elijah decides to start this weird raspy, dry cough.  He'd had a kind of snotty nose the past couple of mornings, but not throughout the day, he would just wake up with a stopped up nose and I would pull out that torture-device known as the booger-sucking bulb and clean his nose out while he screamed bloody murder and then everything would go back to normal.  But then this cough started.  It wasn't mucousy, it just sounded like he had a frog in his throat.  If it had been mucousy I would have assumed he was getting a cold, but instead I didn't know what was going on.

So thinking if it got worse I would call his doctor, I went ahead and made plans to have dinner with a friend of mine and I took him with me, of course.  It was a nice dinner and I got to catch up a little with my friend Jamie who I hardly ever get to see anymore.  But Elijah was acting fussier than normal and still doing that cough.  So when I got home and put him to bed I decided that I would call his doctor in the morning.

But then I went to bed and the nightmare began.  I woke up around eleven to the sound of him crying and when I went to get him, he was wheezing like crazy.  When he would cry it would get worse, to the point where he would get silent like he wasn't getting any air.  And he was majorly upset.  So I called Mike, but of course, the doo doo head left his phone on vibrate and wouldn't answer.  So I called my mom but I guess her phone wasn't in her room or she didn't hear it.  So finally I called my dad and said "What do I do?  I don't want to be the looney parent who takes their kid to the ER for a cough, but he's wheezing." Dad convinced me to go to the ER because if there was something wrong, it needed to be taken care of.  So I packed him up and drove to the closest one to my house--St Jo.  Fortunately, it must have been a slow night because they got us right in.  He got his airway suctioned out again (he hated that), he got a steroid shot (also hated that), he got chest xrays (wasn't too fond of that, either), and a breathing treatment similar to the one my brother used to have when he was a kid and had asthma.

I did finally get ahold of Mike and, of course, promptly griped at him for not having his phone on.  But he said he thought I did the right thing. (We'll see if he still feels that way when we get the bill.  So much for our nice  tax refund.)  Anyway, we got out of there around 1:00 a.m., got home by 1:30, and got to bed about 2:00.  But of course he still didn't sleep very well.  And he didn't sleep well the next night or the night after that.  The ER said he did have a touch of pneumonia so I wasn't totally crazy.  It seems very odd, though, because the next day when I took him to see his pediatrician, they said his airway sounded fine, and he hasn't really had any wheezing since.  He still has a little bit of a cough but it's nowhere near as terrible sounding as it was.  It makes me think I dreamed the whole thing up or I overreacted but it just really seemed like he couldn't breathe on Monday night.

I don't know.  I'm not sure I'll ever really know what happened Monday night unless he's later diagnosed with asthma or something because that's really what it sounded like.  No medical professionals we saw seemed to think it was asthma but I suppose they could be wrong.  Anyhow, we're staying away from public places for awhile so we don't infect anyone else (although I'm still not feeling sick at all, which also makes me wonder if he was actually sick because I don't see how I could have avoided catching it from him).  And we're looking forward to a nice chunk of change being demanded from us for my crazy mother visit to the ER.

I hope, however, that once he's over whatever this is, we can go back to the better sleeping.  I think maybe the roids they gave him were messing with his sleep.  So no more roids, okay?  Unless he totally can't breathe again like before.  Plus, I don't want him going into some roid rage and breaking all his toys. ;) (Just kidding, it was only 15 mg of prednisone.)

The Holidays

So the long and short of it is that the nap plan failed.  Elijah was sleeping good in his bouncy chair so it was working for awhile, but then he outgrew his chair, so we're back to the terrible 30-40 minute naps.  Also now night sleep is getting bad again because I think he's teething.  So I give up and am just going to try to wait it out.  In the meantime, though, I don't want to just be in survival mode and be hoping for him to get bigger.  I want to enjoy him at the age he is.  I feel like too often I'm just waiting for the next stage of my life and thinking that once I get there, everything will be okay.  And then I don't savor the place I am in.  I did this in college and then in law school.  I do feel like I did a decent job enjoying my time as a young professional and a newlywed, but once I started trying to get pregnant it became another situation where I just had to get where I was going before I could be happy.  And now that I have my son, I am happy to be a mother, but it gets very tiring never having any time to myself and such.  I am trying to keep perspective, though, since his life as a baby will only be a year or two of his life.  But I want to keep that perspective while still enjoying his time as a baby.  It's a difficult balance.

Recently we had his first Christmas.  This was both a blessing and a difficulty.  First off, we had early Christmas with Mike's family because we were going to be out of town right around Christmas Eve and Day.  His parents went way overboard buying gifts not only for Elijah, but also for us.  It always makes me feel terribly guilty when we spend like $25 a piece on them and they spend about $500 on us.  But then my parents do the same thing and I guess I shouldn't complain about getting gifts.  After that we took a week-long vacation to Oklahoma City to see my mom and stepdad and brother and sister-in-law.  Like I said, my parents also went insane buying stuff for us and making me feel guilty for getting them only one thing.  But other than that it was a nice break.  It was especially nice for me because having my mom and Mike around 24/7 meant that I didn't always have to be the one to hold Elijah and try to get him to sleep all day.  Mike actually became pretty adept at getting him to sleep for longer periods of time.  Basically he would hold him and stand up and bounce with him until he went to sleep, at which point he would find a comfy spot and sit down and hold Elijah while he slept.  Then when Elijah would start to wake up, Mike would stand up and bounce some more and sometimes it would put him back to sleep.  Not always, but sometimes.

We also got to see my dad, who came up for a couple days to do gift exchange and hang out.  Elijah got to wear Papa's Harley Davidson hat.  As far as Mommy is concerned, this is as close as he's going to get to a motorcycle, at least until he's 18 and I have no more say in the matter.

We stayed the week between Christmas and New Years and got to see some long distance friends of mine that I hadn't seen in a really long time.  We didn't get to spend much time with them but it was lots of fun and I think we get to see them again in May.  Two of them just had a baby so the babies got to meet each other and play together--at least as much as a five month old and an eight month old can.

After that on New Year's Eve we drove back home with my mom and stepdad following us home.  They came to help with some projects that needed to be done around my house.  Most of the projects got done, but not until after I nearly had a nervous breakdown from the stress of having multiple projects going on at once and not getting finished at a pace that I preferred.  Plus, all the changes, I think, stressed Elijah out too much.  He did not sleep well the few days we got home.  I think all the activity and people being around just got to be too much for him.  The past few nights he's slept better now that we are kind of getting back into our routine (of course, I'm using the word "routine" very loosely here since his erratic napping really does not provide us with any kind of a normal routine).  So even though I have many other things around this house that need to get done, I'll probably just have to stick to taking care of Elijah myself for several days until he feels semi-normal again.

On the plus side, several of the difficult projects I needed done are now done thanks to my wonderful stepdad.  And Elijah now has several new toys, including a walker that he can almost use--his legs just need to grow like one more inch.  I feel certain that next Christmas will be even more fun--and possibly more stressful, but hey, what is parenthood if not stressful?

The Nap Plan

So if you've been keeping track of me at all, you know that Elijah isn't napping like I'd like him to.  He also isn't sleeping at night like I'd prefer, but I really can't complain that much about night sleep.  He generally sleeps until about 5:30 or 6:00 a.m., it's just that he's still sleeping in our bed.  I'd like to transfer him to his crib at night because I don't sleep well with him right there next to me.  I hear *every* little peep or movement he makes and so I don't sleep soundly.  (Plus, Mike and I don't really have any time to ourselves.)  However, not sleeping soundly, but sleeping for 7 hours straight is preferrable to actually being totally woken up every 30 minutes and then being up for another 30-45 minutes, which is what happens right now if I try to put him in the crib to sleep at night.

Anyway, so I read Elizabeth Pantley's "The No-Cry Sleep Solution" and "The No-Cry Nap Solution" and have a plan in place to get him to nap in his crib eventually.  That will, hopefully, lead to him being comfortable sleeping in his crib so that I can let him sleep there at night.

The first part of the plan is extending his naps from 30-45 minutes to 1 & 1/2 to 2 hours at a time.  Right now I am letting him nap in his bouncy chair at approximately 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. because he likes it and it has vibration.  The vibration helps him put himself back to sleep if he wakes up before 2 hours is up.  This week is going to be all bouncy chair on the kitchen table where I am at 10 and 2.  Next week it will be the same except the bouncy chair will be moved to his room.  I haven't decided if I'm going to start out with it on the floor or if I'm going to just put it in his bed.  This is going to be annoying for me because I'll have to stay in the room unless this week he perfects his ability to put himself back to sleep (right now I often have to intervene and help him get back to sleep).  So I am looking for some good books to read while I deal with that.  Eventually, I'll start turning off the vibration when he falls asleep so that he can learn to stay asleep without vibration.  Then he gets in it without the vibration on at all.  Then, finally, he gets laid down in the crib itself without the bouncy chair.  I am praying that this plan works because after he's had a few good weeks of napping in his crib, I'm going to start trying to put him in his crib to sleep at night.  I expect that it will take a few weeks of Mike and I getting up and going to him in his room and helping him get back to sleep, but after that, hopefully, our sleep problems will be more or less fixed.  I really hope it works because I have no other tricks up my sleeve.

I'm also introducing a "lovey".  It's this stuffed animal that he and I cuddle with when he nurses and I give it to him while he sleeps so that it can be like a comfort item.  I hope between "the plan" and the lovey and the fact that he'll be getting older as this goes along, that we will have this problem nipped in the bud by the time he's 6 months old.  Because then it's time to start introducing solid foods and soon after that we'll probably be dealing with separation anxiety.

Please, Lord.  Just one problem at a time, okay?  Love, Bonnie.

The Day I've Had or Things For Which I Am Grateful

So this morning Elijah had his follow up appointment with his cardiologist and the day started out very interesting.  First, Elijah is having to sleep unswaddled now and so he's not sleeping terrifically at night anymore.  So he had already woken up several times and even though I didn't have to get him up and feed him, I did have to keep getting up and helping him settle back to sleep, which can sometimes take as long as a feeding.  Then around 5:30 I woke up to hear him crying, but it was a muffled crying sound.  Now normally when he wakes up in the middle of the night he doesn't cry, he just kind of makes grunty noises like he's having trouble settling.  This was different.  And it sounded muffled like there was something near his nose.

So I sprang up and reached for him only to discover that he had flipped over onto his tummy AGAIN and wasn't able to flip back over.  So while swallowing my heart back down into my chest, I flipped him back over and then picked him up and brought him up to feed him since it was already 5:30 and the experience had scared him a little.  That brings us to thing #1 for which I am grateful: That I heard Elijah on his tummy and that he was not swaddled.

After that we tried to lie back down and go back to sleep, but he was pretty awake so we didn't get to sleep until what I would guess was about 6:45 because when the alarm went off at 7:00 I didn't feel like I'd slept at all, even though I was clearly asleep before it went off and woke me up.  And unfortunately I couldn't go back to sleep because I had to get up and get ready to take Elijah to the doctor's office.

So I did that and we all drove downtown to Children's Mercy Hospital where his appointment was.  We had to wait a long time before we finally got to go back for our appointment.  It was scheduled at 9:00 and I don't think we went back until like 9:30, I don't think they did his echo until 10:00 and I'm positive we didn't actually see the doctor until almost 11:00.

But while she was doing the echo he was starting to fuss because he was tired, so we gave him his pacifier with some sugar water on it and he settled down.  I stroked his head and let him hold my finger and he fell asleep.  Then when she was done and we went back to the exam room, I put him down on the exam table and he slept there, too, until the doctor finally came in.  It was baffling to me how well he was sleeping since he got startled several times but just went back to sleep without much trouble.  Later I asked the doctor if he thought his heart issues had anything to do with his sleeping troubles, but as I described them the doctor said he just thought Elijah was a social person and didn't like being in the room alone.  So, thing #2 for which I am grateful: I though of another thing to try to help him sleep better.  I'm going to try leaving the TV on low for him to see if the people talking on TV makes him think he's not alone in the room.  If that doesn't work I'll try recording myself talking or singing and play that for him and see if it helps.

So we finally saw the doctor and he said that the defects in Elijah's heart have not gotten any smaller but they have also not grown even though he has grown.  So if they stay the same size even though he gets bigger, he may not have to have any procedure and he doesn't want to see Elijah again until next year.  So that is things\ #3 for which I am grateful.

However, we had been there so long that it was past time for Elijah to eat again.  I fed him a little at the doctor's office but there's really no comfortable place (for me or Elijah) to nurse.  (You would think there would be since it's a children's hospital, but whatever.)  I was hoping the small nursing would stave off his hunger until we could get home.  But first we had to drop Mike off at work and Elijah was starting to cry even as I got into the driver's seat to go home.  People on the road probably were calling me all sorts of colorful names as I attempted to race home so that he wouldn't have to go for too long before he got to eat (especially since I hate listening to him cry) and downtown is pretty far from our house.  So thing #4 for which I am grateful is that I did not get a ticket for speeding.

I finally got home around noon and after letting the dog out, I immediately went upstairs and fed Elijah.  I was pretty hungry by then, too, but he comes first, obviously.  So then I went back downstairs and was going to put him in his bouncy chair so I could finally get some lunch when I smelled something familiar and decided I probably needed to change his diaper before I ate.  Ah, if only it had been that simple.  See, Mike has suddenly decided that he doesn't like putting Elijah's diapers on very tightly because he's afraid it hurts him or something.  I don't really know why.  But since he was the one who changed Elijah's diaper at the doctor before I came home, the poo didn't really stay in the diaper.  Instead, it ended up all over his legs and back and bottom and tummy.

So I wiped it up as best I could and took off his soiled clothes.  I threw the diaper away and took him downstairs to give him a bath.  He, of course, decided to pee while I was giving him a bath so that added another thing to the giant list of things I had to clean up.  But after bathing him, I put a new diaper on him and put him in his bouncy chair.  Then I cleaned the pee off the counter, changed the changing table cover and crib sheet, and took his soiled clothes to the bathroom where I rinsed the poo off them as best I could and then took them down to the basement to put spray and wash on them and leave them in the laundry hamper.

When I got downstairs I discovered a spider in the hamper which I am afraid might have been a fiddleback.  So I went back upstairs and got a flip flop to kill it and a piece of toilet paper to scoop up the carcass.  So spider died and went down the toilet, but I'm afraid if there was one there might be more so I'm making Mike a HazMat suit and sending him down there with bug spray tonight.  But thing #5 for which I am grateful is that I saw the spider and was able to kill it without getting bitten.

So then I sprayed the soiled clothes with spray and wash and then go back upstairs and FINALLY make my lunch.  Thing #6 for which I am grateful: Elijah played happily in his bouncy chair the whole time I was dealing with this poo/pee mess and spider situation.

Anyway, now things have finally calmed down and I'm fairly certain Elijah is getting hungry again so I'd better go feed him.  But after today I have no energy to make dinner for the 7th and final thing for which I am grateful: Mike is picking up Panera for dinner tonight.

Fall and Fighting Naps

Fall is my favorite season.  The weather is just right for wearing fuzzy sweaters and jeans (although I'm not quite fitting into these things yet and the weather has been unseasonably warm lately) and the leaves on the trees turn to such pretty colors.

And this October my baby turned 3 months old.  But I think I read too many books telling me that things got easier at 3 months.  Granted, he's only been 3 months for a few days but he's seemed unusually grumpy and his grumpiness seems to stem from frustration.  At least as far as I can tell, he wants to go places and be able to do things that he can't do yet.  But of course, he hates tummy time which is designed to strengthen his muscles so he can learn to sit up and crawl eventually.  Even when we go outside and go for a walk in the pretty fall weather he only lasts for so long before he seems frustrated that he can't get out and play in it.  It all leads me to the conclusion that I am going to have my hands completely full when he does start crawling.

Therefore, he MUST start taking regular naps or else I'm not going to have time to use the bathroom once he starts crawling, let alone do anything else like get dinner ready.  But as always, we are constantly having nap problems.  For one thing, he doesn't seem to like his crib.  For right now it's okay because I can put him in the pack and play bassinet next to our bed for naps.  But he's so friggin long that pretty soon he's going to outgrow the pack and play bassinet and then he'll have to sleep in his crib because there will be nowhere else.  Plus, once he does start crawling, I will need that pack and play downstairs so I can put him in it while I make dinner.

For another thing, he can now roll over so I can't swaddle him anymore.  This is causing even nighttime sleep to be problematic because when he wakes up, it's like pulling teeth to get him to settle back down.  He doesn't start crying or want to be picked up, but he's constantly wiggling and making little grunty noises and trying to flip over, thus preventing his mommy from ignoring it and going back to sleep.

Finally, he's still only taking 30-45 minute naps at a time, which means I can't get anything done while he's napping.  I finally got a handle on the getting him to sleep problem by holding him until he's dead asleep, but now he can't seem to settle himself back down and go back to sleep if he wakes up even a little while he's napping.  And it doesn't help when Nickel starts randomly barking, although I have decided now that the dog will go down in the basement while Elijah is napping to prevent Nickel making startling noises, causing the baby to wake up and me to want to take a frying pan to his doggy head.

On the positive side, Elijah is much more efficient at eating now and we've completely eliminated the use of the breast shields.  That has helped greatly in removing him from my breast when he falls asleep.  When I was using the shields, there was always milk left in the shield that would drip when I pulled him away from the breast.  Now there's no dripping.

Another positive is that he seems somewhat more interested in toys.  I don't think it will be much longer before he's able to grasp and play with toys, which will make our days more interesting and fun.  If he was a older, I'd rake up leaves and let him jump in the piles, but obviously we can't do that right now.  Maybe next year.  This year all we were able to do is make him a spider costume and take him to the Cider Mill.  Of course he slept most of the time because he didn't take a good morning nap.  And I couldn't really get a good picture of him in his costume, but there's always next week.  I'll dress him in his costume again for Halloween Day and hopefully we can get a decent picture before he conks out on me again.

Road Trip

So this coming weekend we are taking our first road trip with Elijah.  This will be the first time he's ridden anywhere farther than downtown Kansas City where Daddy works.  I'm trying to plan when to leave and what to pack without bringing the entire house with us.  So far I've concluded that it would be best to try to leave as early as possible and as close to just after a feeding as possible.  Hopefully if we leave right after a feeding he'll be content and just go to sleep in his car seat.  However, it does put us at higher risk for immediate poo diaper, which would mean we'd have to stop quickly and change his diaper.  I guess we'll just have to cross our fingers and hope the poo stays at bay for at least a few hours.

Leaving just after a feeding also gives us the advantage of being able to drive for about three hours before we have to stop for another feeding.  The problem then becomes whether I feed him in the car, which will be very difficult logistically, or if I feed him in whatever restaurant we stop for lunch at and deal with disapproving looks even though I'll be wearing my cover (because you know there will be some).  And I'm not feeding him in the bathroom.  No one else eats in the bathroom so my baby shouldn't have to either.  I guess it will depend on where we stop and how hungry I am (like can I feed him in the car and then wait until he's done feeding before I get to eat).  Alternatively I guess I could pump some milk that I could just feed to him while Mike drives and Elijah doesn't have to get out of his seat.  But I hate for him to be stuck in that seat for 6 straight hours and I'd rather not end up with rock boobs by the time we get there.

As far as packing goes, I know I'll need to bring his clothes, the bassinet sheet (my mom has a playpen with bassinet for him to sleep in, just not a sheet for it), my moby wrap, my breastfeeding cover and his shampoo and baby wash.  I also don't plan on bringing a ton of diapers and wipes because my mom and I can get some at the store once I get there.  But should I bring his bouncy chair?  His bathing chair?  His stroller?  The baby monitor?  If we bring all those things I'm not sure we're going to have room for it all in our car.  If I don't bring the bouncy chair it means someone has to hold him the majority of the time we're there.  If I don't bring the bathing chair it's going to be a lot more difficult and potentially dangerous to give him a bath and I don't want him to go five days without a bath.  The stroller would take up practically the whole trunk but if we don't bring it, if we go anywhere we either have to carry him in the car seat or in the moby wrap.  And I really don't want to pack the monitor but I don't know how else to keep tabs on him while he's napping in another room.

Road trips are way more complicated with an infant.  But we're very excited nonetheless.  It's been a couple months almost since he's seen my mom and stepdad.  And my brother & sister-in-law's baby shower is that weekend.  So that should be fun.  Hopefully Elijah won't be grumpy so I can sit and enjoy it without his crying making my chest ache and leak.  And so he doesn't scare the crapola out of my sister-in-law getting ready to have her own. ;)