Self portrait

Christopher tests the slobber tolerance of the camera:

Settling in

We're still unpacking into our new place, so there has been a bit of a lull in posts. We've got broadband up and running, so I'll be posting some videos as I get them uploaded to youtube. There haven't been too many pictures latelly since we've been spending our days working on the house.

In the two weeks we've been here, Christopher has picked up two new tricks. He still can't (or won't?) crawl, but he can slither up to something and pull himself up to a stand. He also figured out how to get into a sitting position on his own.

Camera chaser

Christopher really likes the camera

Made it!

Saturday, before the wedding, we spent some time trying to figure out how to break up the second half of the trip. We had about 20 hours left and the ten hour days were kind of rough, but the more time in the car, the crankier Christopher was getting.

The wedding was great. Christopher had to be take to the edge of the field because he was babbling. Ashley and Michael arranged for a baby sitter for Christopher and Ashley's niece Fiona. It was great. I put him to sleep by pushing him up the hill in the stroller. (The gravel road had him out in about 30 seconds). Mandy and I then spent an hour or two square dancing.

Sunday we hit the road around noon. In the end, we solved our scheduling dilemma by not stopping at all. We drove through the night last night and arrived in Massachusetts around 10 this morning. Christopher slept from about 7 last night on. He woke up for about 30 minutes to eat in the morning.

Next up...moving in.

Arrived in MN

We have landed in Rochester. We stopped by the groom's family farm for drinks and a bonfire. For a minute, I thought Christopher had finally reached his breaking point. He was great on the 12 hour car ride today, but he seemed overwhelmed by all the people tonight. I tried to put him to be at 8 local time. He'd been up for 3 hours and was cranky, but he showed no signs of actually being sleepy and (surprise) wouldn't go to sleep. So we played in the grass and mingled for another 45 minutes. He was out cold by the time we turned around in the driveway to leave. And for the 4th night in a row has gone to sleep with minimal fuss in a crib he's never seen in before.
 Maybe he's doing fine and I'm reaching my breaking point. Tomorrow, we don't drive anywhere and get a chance to unwind.

Here are some pictures of Chris in the grass. There is a cute video, too, but the pictures took an hour to upload, I'm not going to try uploading video here. The wireless at the Travelodge leaves something to be desired (three or four bars of something).

The road to MN

We are headed to a friends wedding in Rochester, Minnesota on Saturday, so we're on a bit of a schedule. Wednesday we drove 9 hours from Salt Lake to Hot Springs, South Dakota and today another 9 to Rochester. Those are highway hours, not including stops. Chris is getting sick of being in the car seat all day, and teething biscuits only keep him occupied for so long.

So we've been trying to stop at parks. We've found some nice spots.

Thursday, we took a day off and just wandered around Hot Springs and let Christopher play on the floor in the B and B.

Crawling movie up on youtube

technorati tags:movie, chris

Elko

We had lunch in Elko, NV. This town has a great city park. Nothing fancy, just a few play grounds, some covered picknic tables, and lots of grass.

Headed East

Christopher is tolerating spending his days in the car seat. He was amazing while we packe up the house and spent the last two nights in his Pack n Play with no complaints. But last night at the Reno Holiday Inn, he conned us into pulling him into bed at 2am. We tried to get up early and get him into the car to finish sleeping, but he never went back to sleep. Tomorrow we'll try again. With luck, we'll do better as we have a 10 hour drive ahead of us.

I am uploading a video of Christopher draggin himself across the floor of our hotel room in Salt Lake City. I'll add a link once it completes.