My Cousin's Wedding

We just got back from a 3-day trip to Seattle for my cousin's wedding. It was a great trip. We stayed with family members who have kids near the ages of ours, and everyone had a blast. I was even able to check in on my blog from their computer.

It's very late and I need to go to bed (our bedtime experiment will probably start on Tuesday), but here are some tidbits.

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• Baby E spent much of the time poking people in the nose and saying "nah", holding her dolly while rocking it and patting its back, smiling and waving at people, and trying desperately to get as close as possible to any baby she saw. She also spent a lot of time following the other kids around trying to participate in their activities, which was extremely cute.



• I managed to leave my dress at home, so had to re-wear the pantsuit I wore to the pre-wedding festivities to the wedding. But I was able to take it in stride and not stress out about it. It's certainly the first time I've ever worn pants to a wedding, much less pants I also wore the day before to a pre-wedding celebration with all the same people present.
  
  I guess I've come a long way since our first anniversary, when I completely freaked out about leaving my white dress at the B & B from the night before so that I didn't have anything dressy to wear for our anniversary dinner. Maybe I'll write about that trip for a Monday Memory sometime. Or maybe not.



• We met a baby at the wedding who was 3 weeks older than Baby E and quite a bit more advanced in the walking and talking departments. The two of them were charmed with each other and played together adorably, poking each other in the face and handing toys back and forth until they got into a screaming meltdown over a little book they both wanted.



• The kids were great during the wedding. AJ was particularly fascinated by the exchange of the rings. She's asked several times about my and DH's rings, and became intent on what was happening up front when I explained to her that DH and I had given each other our rings in just that way when we got married.



• MM and AJ had a great time running around and playing with the flower girls. MM asked everyone she met if they knew her cousin J, was flabbergasted that they didn't, and told them how great he is.
  
  I think that may be an improvement over her previous habit of telling everyone she meets (complete with trembling lip and puppydog eyes) that she misses her fwiend Ambew and doesn't want to live at our house any mowuh; she wants to live with Ambew fowevew and evew. Because she doesn't love anybody else except Ambew. She only loves Ambew, not Mommy or Daddy or Sister or anybody else--except Baby E of course. She still makes exceptions for Baby E.



• Baby E, after my post last night, proceeded to set a new personal record. I had mentioned that she could be awake for up to 4 hours after sleeping briefly and then waking in the middle of the night, even (especially?) after napping very little all day.
  
  I underestimated her.
  
  Baby E fell asleep last night around 8:30, but was awakened when we put the other girls to bed a half-hour or so later (we were sharing a room). The fact that we were not at home and there was lots of interesting action going on in the house probably didn't help the situation.
  
  First there was probably an hour and a half or so of rocking, singing and nursing--about an hour of which was E screaming angrily in DH's arms because he was sitting in the dark with her and trying to soothe her to sleep when she did NOT want to go to sleep; she wanted to get up and play.
  
  Then I laid down with her and nursed her again, dozing off briefly myself until I was jolted awake by the realization that she was crawling all over the bed playing and was in danger of falling off the edge. So I put her in the crib and laid down on the floor next to it, dozing off again while she alternately played and fussed for the next hour or so. Finally, when it was obvious she wasn't going to settle down any time soon, I took her out to DH who let her play while he and our relatives played Settlers of Catan and I went back to sleep.
  
  She finally went to sleep around 2 a.m., for a total of about 5 hours of being awake after she was supposedly asleep for the night. She woke up at 4, 5, 6 and 7--the last three of which she was already in our bed--but went back to sleep fairly quickly with nursing.



• At the moment DH is in Baby E's room trying to soothe her back to sleep after she woke up getting out of the car when we got home, fell back asleep nursing, woke up when I laid her down, went briefly back to sleep in the crib and then woke up again. It's been about an hour. DH is snoring on the bed in there, while Baby E, from the sound of it, is still awake in the crib (though not crying).



• Now I'm looking forward even more to starting our experiment with consistent sleep times and routines this week. I really hope it works.



• AJ made a cute little friend at the pre-wedding festivities. He was 11 years old, but not much bigger than AJ. He was sweet, happy and friendly, and played beautifully with AJ. She said he was her new friend that she liked a lot. He appeared to have Down's Syndrome. When it was time to go, AJ picked half a leaf off a tree next to the tire swing where they'd been playing, and said she was going to keep it forever to help her remember her new friend and how much fun they had playing on the tire swing.



• MM picked up a rock at our relatives' house to remember the weekend by. She selected it carefully from the driveway, and kept careful care of it all evening. Every time she mentioned it, she had to refer to it by its full name: "My rock that I got to help me remember the time we spent at J's house, and how much fun we had playing with J."



• As we were traveling home tonight, AJ said, "Let's talk about all the fun things we did the last few days. I'd like that. It was a great trip, wasn't it? We had a lot of fun playing with J, and I liked the wedding. Can we go to the wedding again soon? I'll remember the wedding forever and ever."



• The wedding was beautiful. The bride and groom are perfect for each other and obviously very much in love. A funny moment was when the groom, overcome with emotion during the special music toward the end of the wedding, tried to kiss the bride. She quickly turned her head so he ended up kissing her cheek instead of the lips he'd been aiming for. The crowd erupted into laughter while the minister said, "Just a couple more minutes. It's not time to kiss her yet."
  
  The joke resurfaced when it finally WAS time for the kiss, then again during the best man's toast.



• The best man, as the main part of his toast, wrote a song for the bride and groom. How sweet is that?



• We put the kids in their pajamas before heading home, and they all fell asleep. Which meant that DH and I got to have some actual adult conversation. Which was very nice.