Monday, November 2, 2015

Baby Z hits the road! Loughborough Round 1



So car rides and road trips quickly became a thing for us upon moving to Scotland.  Of course they would have to become a norm since we live in a relatively isolated part of the UK, far in the Northeast Corner of Scotland.  It doesn't help-at all- that these wee Scottish roads are first off, wee, and second very, very windy.  Stella has made her displeasure with Scottish roads known to us on several occasions.  This has resulted in many long car rides made even longer by impromptu stops on country roads to clean and disinfect our car and our child. We found that just moving her car seat over to the middle resolved most issues with motion sickness.  However, the arrival of Baby Z meant that Stella has had to migrate back to her original spot behind the passenger, so lets just say we travel with bleach wipes and towels always in the car.

With that said, she loves riding in the car and is a real trooper about it.  A few days ago, Stella tells me, "I need to go out. I need to go for a drive in the car."  Bless her heart it's been about 2 weeks since our last road trip and now she's experiencing withdrawal.

We'll see if Baby Z demonstrates the same penchant for roadtrips.  So far not so much.  Ten hours in a car has a devastating effect on sleep training. Our little pumpkin gave me 8 hours of sleep at 5 weeks!!!! Our first long car ride undid this. Doh!

Seven-hour car drives tend to turn into 10-hour car ride quite easily with a toddler and a newborn.  Nevertheless, it's what we do at the chance to have Baby Z meet her GREATgrandparents. This was Baby Z's first day-long car ride at 3 months old or thereabouts.  So we learned several things on this trip.  One, Baby Z is awesome on car rides and can sleep most of the way save  regular stops for feeds and changes.  Two, if we let her sleeps the whole car ride, she WILL NOT SLEEP at night!  Such simple evidently common-sensical information that doesn't occur to re-NEW parents.

Either way it was an absolute joy and blessing to witness Baby Z meeting and spending time with her Great Grandparents.

I found Stella hiding behind the summer house/shed one afternoon. She'd apparently learned how to use the rain water barrel to water the plants!

Such a good helper around the garden!


Great Grandma's house is always fun!


Chatsworth Estate on our drive back through Derbyshire


So we unwittingly created a little family photo tradition.  On our first trip to England as a newly engaged couple, we visited Chatsworth House (Mr Darcy's house in P&P).

Then after having Stella, we traveled again to the UK to have her meet her Great Grandparents in England and we made another trip to see in the inside of Mr Darcy's house this time.  We also thought it was worth a try to recreate our first picture with our little addition.

So then Baby Z came along being born in the UK and we of course took her to meet her great grandparents and made a stop-amidst the sheep paddies-at Chatsworth again. If we have any more kids in the US, this is quickly going to become a fairly expensive family portrait session.


Smart sheep crossing over the road away from all their paddies.

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