Babies First Road Trip

The start of this road trip was entirely dependent on what time the cubs woke up.  Our plan was when they woke up, get them fed, get them bathed and head out the door.  We had quite a drive in front of us to our first destination, Colorado Springs.  Once they did wake up we went into full swing.  Both babies were fed, bathed and dressed and we all made it out the door by about 10:45.  Record time if you ask me for getting twins ready.

We stopped off to top off the gas tank and get the ever important cup of Starbucks before we hit the open road.  Our timing seemed to be close to perfect, there wasn't much traffic and taking the E470 toll route is so worth the money!  We slipped by all of the mess of driving through Denver.

The twins were really good on our drive.  As babies do, they slept for most of the way.  We were going to stop in Monument to feed them, but since they were still being quiet we decided to just push on through to Colorado Springs.

Our first stop, time to meet their Great Aunt Lisa, my cousin Sara and I think this is right, their second cousin Jack.

Last time I saw Jack he was about 7 months old and I was just amazed at how big he's gotten!  He was really bashful around us, but he seemed to have a good time playing with his blocks and cars and such.  I don't know if he was too sure about these new little babies in HIS grandma's house, so he sort of kept his distance from them.  I hope that a year or two down the road the three of them will find great play mates with each other when we visit.

Auntie Lisa couldn't get enough of the little ones and always had one or the other, (sometimes both), on her lap.  She's already talking about coming out to our place next so she can get another 'twin fix'.  We had lots of hands to hold a baby or two in this house.

Calista decided that she wanted to show off her talking to her new found relatives and began her screeching.  It's a new sound she discovered and really sounds a lot like a Raptor from the movie Jurassic Park.  It had us all laughing at her.  Alex was a quiet little man for the most part, he did a few of his Ooooo's, but mainly just took everything in.

Our next stop was Canon City to meet their Great Grandma Conley.  We arrived in Canon City and got checked into our hotel, the Holiday Inn Express, and then headed out to Great Grandma's house.  I did try to take Ed on a quick detour to show him the house my Grandpa Crites had lived in.  I knew that they had torn it down and rebuilt on the land, but I couldn't remember what street it was on.  So we just headed over to Great Grandma's house.

When we got there the cubs were still in really good spirits and full of smiles and giggles.  Great Grandma was amazed at how calm and happy our little cubs were.  We had a nice visit and Great Grandma got to hold both Alex and Calista (although we forgot to get a picture of her holding Alex).

By about 8 p.m. though they were getting pretty fussy and it was time to get them fed and put to bed for the night. We packed them up and went back to our hotel.  As Ed and I were carrying the cubs into the room a biker in the room next to us was just coming out of his room. He saw the two car seats and you could just see the look of pain on his face.  Made me chuckle though.

Now we had requested two cribs when I checked us in and was told that they only had one crib. And that crib was a JOKE! It looked like it came from a 1950's hospital ward with the mattress almost sitting on the floor. I'm calling it the back breaker. The other item they had was a play pen... each was an additional $10. I paid for the one crib and we figured we'd just put one cub in bed with us.  The other thing we discovered was that there was no fridge in the room.  This meant making formula on the fly in the night.  But we also had to go find some cooling system to keep Alex's medicine cold.  We ended up with a bucket of ice.

When I walked into the room I smelled smoke, but it wasn't over powering.  The entire hotel was supposed to be non-smoking.  We got the cubs fed, changed into some jammies and settled in for the night.  I went in to use the bathroom and was just about knocked over by the over powering smell of stale smoke.  It smelled like someone had left a dirty ashtray in there for a week.  So I put on some pajama bottoms and went to the lobby to complain.  I've read too many things about second hand smoke being linked to SIDS to want it anywhere near my babies.  The desk clerk did come up with some deodorizer and that seemed to clear up the smell in the bathroom.

At last we were all ready to go to sleep for the night.  We had Calista in the bed with us and poor little Alex in that old old crib.  But in the middle of the night we switched them up just to keep things fair.

Everyone else went to sleep rather easily, I however couldn't sleep because I kept thinking about that smoke and is it going to get my baby.  I think I fell asleep by midnight and they had us back up at 3 a.m.

The worst part of motherhood for this blog is staying awake all night listening up for your baby breathing, afraid of SIDS.

The best part of motherhood for this blog is having my cubs meet family members.