We're still on the one-month road trip with Claire, so I thought I'd put up a quick post to tell you how it's going.
First of all, despite the fact that Claire has (seemingly) always hated being in her car seat, she doesn't seem to mind public transport at all. (A girl after my own heart, I suppose.) Of the whole trip from my home in the desert to Vickie's home in Montmartre, we heard from her for about 5 minutes total. This includes a 30-min drive, a 2-hr flight, a 2-hr layover, a 10-hr flight, a 5-min shuttle ride, a 45-min RER train ride, a 20-min search for an ATM in her first-ever sub-zero temperatures...then a 20-min taxi ride, and 4 flights of stairs. So five minutes of fussing is a real accomplishment. She's officially a trooper.
Our trip has four basic segments...in France we had Paris with friends and Vichy with family...then in the US, we've got two stops on the East Coast. Paris with friends was fabulous. Vickie, Manu and Alex took great care of us, and we had such a relaxing time hanging out with them. It was nice being in another house with a baby, because he had his own little routine and Claire had hers...which she basically stuck to--meaning little to no fussiness. (Except while falling asleep VERY late a couple of the nights...this was Claire's version of jet-lag as best I can tell). I later realized that this first part of the trip could also be considered the calm before the storm, because it got more difficult from there... It was great to spend time with Samy's family, but it was so hectic...little Claire is the 19th grandchild, and although they weren't ALL there, there were enough people around to make things quite busy, and as a result there were plenty of missed naps, etc! Fortunatlely, all of the excitement didn't interfere with her sleeping...she consistently got about 6 hours a night, then another 2-3 after a snack. (And then just this week she slept for 7 hours at the first stretch...only interupted by the fact that I had to feed her....!)
The trip back to the US was also a success. (Well, not for the airline, as we spent seven hours on the ground waiting to take off...IN THE PLANE the whole time.) But it didn't bother us too much.
We've enjoyed being here with my family, and are looking forward to some time in Jersey. Then we return to the desert on Friday the 13th. I'm sort of looking forward to going back home to normalcy! A month is a long time to be away from home! :)
Posted by amy at January 5, 2006 06:35 AM