Baby Schrades: We've been at the beach!

My parents live about an hour south of Jacksonville, FL, in a town called Palm Coast. We spent last week there and had such a wonderful time. The trip started on Thursday, August 16th. We left about 4pm, dreading the at least 8 hour drive we had in front of us. We finally arrived at 2am. We spent one hour eating dinner and then had to pull over for at least 1/2 an hour about 2 hours out because Lucas just couldn't relax in his carseat. I nursed him and he finally fell asleep for the rest of the trip. Despite this, he actually did really well. He was a trooper.

On Friday morning Jeff headed back north an hour to Jacksonville to spend the weekend golfing with his dad. Dennis had a big birthday last week and Sandy surprised him with a weekend of golf at Sawgrass, a course where they play the Player's Championship each year (turned out that course was being worked on and they played 2 other courses there). Jeff returned to Palm Coast to hang out with us on Sunday afternoon.

On Monday afternoon Jeff and I headed west 2 hours to Orlando. We spent two nights away from Lucas, our longest stretch yet. We made the best out of such a short little vacation. My parents hooked us up at a condo that was really close to Downtown Disney. We had dinner there both nights and even caught a movie, since that is so hard to do with LB around. On Wednesday we spent the day at Universal Studios and The Island of Adventures. We were there 9 hours and rode just about every ride and saw just about every show. Jeff and I are shocked at how highly those places are priced. A ticket to Universal is about $80. That gets you in the gates and then, unless you purchase an Express Pass for $33, you will probably have to wait 20-40 minutes for each ride. I don't know how so many families do it. Anyway, we had a good time. We were psyched to ride the Spiderman ride that we had heard so much about. It was awesome. We also liked the Mummy and the Hulk roller coasters. We both missed Lucas a lot. We kept saying, "Lucas would love that."

So, how did Lucas do without his mommy and daddy for such a long time? Awesome! He is such a sweet, smart, loving, little guy. From almost the moment we arrived he loved his Grandma and Grandpa. Grandpa would fly him around the house and Grandma took him to the pool. The ONLY issue I was worried about was getting him to sleep since nursing is a part of his routine. That part didn't go so well the first night. This is how my mom said the night went: My parents took Lucas to the beach after dinner, like we had done the nights before. He played hard and was tired. When they got home Lucas took a long bath, as usual. Around 9pm, when he usually gets tired, my mom started trying to get him to go to sleep. We had tried the Pack and Play, and it didn't work, so the plan was for him to sleep in my parents king size bed with my mom. I don't know all of the details, but basically it took almost an hour to get him to go to sleep and there was much crying. At one point, right before falling asleep, Lucas looked at my parents and did the sign for "help". My mom told me this the next morning and I started crying. I could see Lucas's face, exhausted from crying with tears and snot pouring out, looking up with a look of desperation and asking for someone to "please help him!". Ugh, that was such a horrible feeling and I feel guilty about it. He also woke up at 1am and had a similary episode, but Lucas finally let my mom rock him to sleep. Despite this, my mom said that he was happy when he woke up in the morning and didn't hold any grudges. For his nap the next day and for bedtime the next night he told my mom that he was tired by showing her the sign for "night-night". My mom rocked him to sleep and it was a piece of cake. She thinks, looking back, that he just wasn't ready for bed that first night. I think he was in shock that I wasn't there and didn't know how to handle it. But he's such a fast learner. My mom said that he didn't do the sign for "milk" when I was gone. Instead, he did the sign for "cracker" to show that he wanted to eat. He knew that Mama wasn't there to give him his milk.

Jeff and I were so happy to see the little turkey when we arrived back at my parent's house on Wednesday. I swear he looked bigger and older. We picked up our daily routine where we left off, which was breakfast, morning visit to pool, lunch, nap, dinner, evening visit to beach, bath, bed.

I really, really enjoyed myself. My parents have just recently joined their pool. It is also the pol for a resort, so it has that "vacation" feel to it. I felt like I was in Cancun or the Bahamas at a resort. Best of all, they really cater to the kids. There is a kiddie pool with sand, a slide and a lazy river. I can't wait to visit again.

Here are the pictures. There are a lot this time.