Andrea’s Weblog

We just got back from our first long car trip as a family. We drove
almost 12 hours up to DC to Schuyler and Heidi’s wedding. We left
home at 3:45 am to ensure that Elizabeth would sleep for a good bit.
It wasn’t till we were on the road that I started trying to figure
out when I would get to sleep. I had this picture in my head of us
napping in the hotel room before venturing out to the rehearsal
dinner. Then I realized that we were going to use up all her naps in
the car on the way there and there was no chance she would nap on
demand later in the day. I had to get myself to doze while she was
napping, which I was somewhat successful at doing.

Elizabeth’s awake hours were spent eating raisins and talking playing
with her Elmo phone. (A new purchase especially for this trip.) We
kept Elmo updated on our trip in our numerous phone “conversations”
with him. They would usually go something like “Hello? Elmo? Yeah,
we’re still driving. No, I don’t know how much longer it’s going to
be. Yeah, Elizabeth is behaving. She’s never been to North Carolina
before. OK, good talking with you. Love you. Bye-bye.” Somehow I
never pictured myself having such conversations with Elmo.

The trip was quite smooth and only got rough at the end when I
decided to go through DC rather than take the beltway. Elizabeth was
pretty sick of sitting in the car at that point and let out a squawk
every time the car stopped — just to let us know that if the car was
no longer moving she wanted to get out.

Elizabeth really enjoyed riding in her stroller in the city. She
figured out how to climb in it herself and anytime she heard mention
of stroller or walk, she was dashing to her stroller. Before leaving
town we stopped at the National Zoo. She is finally at the age where
she can appreciate seeing the different animals. She was even
captivated in the reptile house by the snakes hiding everywhere. The
only thing she wasn’t too sure about were the gorillas, but one of
them snuck up on her from behind. She seemed to relax a little when
she realized that he was just eating popcorn from the ledge and
wasn’t after her.