The End of an Era, The Beginning of a Journey

Saturday night we threw a little shin-dig to celebrate Ben & Dave's June birthdays. Come nap time, Ben saw that festivities were about to happen and decided he was way too grown up for nap time anymore. He decided instead it would be a good time to learn how to climb out of his crib. As I was standing in my room blowing up balloons and he came waltzing in binky & blankie in hand like it was perfectly normal for him to get out of bed, my heart sank at the bad news. I'm not ready for my third to give up naps quite yet! My other two didn't learn to get out much later than this and they really liked being in their cribs. He's never really been a fan in the first place so I could see we were going to have a struggle on our hands! I quickly put him back in bed and assured him the party wouldn't be starting until after he took a nap but he was having none of it! He proceeded to climb out three or four more times until he finally conked out and hour or so later - hooray!

Luckily the last few days he has still been going to bed and naps fine and just getting himself up when he's done sleeping - until yesterday. Two hours! Two hours I tried to get him to take a nap. I'd put him in bed and a few minutes later I'd find him in my closet sneaking into something or playing underneath Jacob's bed. I tried the super nanny method of not saying anything to him - just lifting him up and placing him back in bed. After two hours I gave up. I let him go watch t.v. with Emma while I worked on packing for our trip. I walked out into the family room and Ben was asleep on the floor in front of the t.v.

He slept for 2.5 hours in the middle of the family room like this with us making noise around him and everything. What a little stinker. Hopefully the nap time battles don't continue because we are leaving on Friday for a big trip!

We are taking a 2 week road trip through Arizona, New Mexico, and final destination is Texas to visit my brother and his family in Round Rock. I usually don't announce when I'm leaving on the Internet but don't worry robbers - I have an alarm that works great (see here) and will be on. And my husband will still be her so don't get any ideas about breaking in while I"m gone. Plus I have these new attack chickens that will peck you to death if you try anything funny.

Anyway, we are visting friends and family in various locations on the way and staying at a few campgrounds in the middle of Timbuktu (because that's all there is between here and Texas - a bunch of nothing!) We are going in my dad's 5th wheel (my dad being the chauffeur of course) and I'm hoping it's lot of fun. (hope, hope, hope!) I think the kids are going to like it.

As always, I've packed 100 things to do into a very short time frame for getting ready to leave for our trip. I always do that! So although I'd like to blog I still need to pack my suitcase, plant a flowerbed, and finish my irrigation system on the garden so Happy Summer all and I'll be back!