(long overdue) Vacation to Gatlinburg

WARNING: This post is going to have a TON of pictures in it….. just a heads up

This past week was our vacation week! Last summer while at the beach with my family, we won a week stay at any Wyndham hotel for listening to their timeshare shpeal. 2 hours of my life for a week’s worth of free lodging? uh, YES. The only catch is that you can only book a month in advance and you kind of get the “leftover” hotel rooms. You can pick what state and area you want to go to and there may or may not be a hotel with dates available. Initially we wanted to go to the beach (duh), but the only beach hotels were 9+ hours away and I was (am) not ready to drive that far with a teething baby. So we went to Gatlinburg! I had never been, so I was excited to go to Ripley’s Aquarium and Wonderworks and just shop and see the mountains. Which is exactly what we did.

We started off the week in Gatlinburg and rode the sky lift first,

and did quite a bit of window shopping and walking around. The next day was Mother’s Day and we went to the Aquarium. They were doing a mother’s day special and since I am now a mother, I got in free! cha-chingg. It was awesome. I can’t remember the last time I went to an aquarium so I had a lot of fun seeing huge, crazy-looking fish, sharks, weird crabs, seahorses, tiny and huge jellyfish, eels, lion fish, penguins (what?!), and tons more. — Oh, and I think the boys had fun too 😉

The next few days were spent relaxing, shopping (Cristian bought me two necklaces (one was from Cristopher) and a beautiful turquoise ring for Mother’s Day), taking Cristopher swimming for the very first time! He absolutely loved it and didn’t cry ONCE. Even when I dipped almost his entire head under water, aaaaand enjoying the jacuzzi tub we had in our apartment/room…I NEED a jacuzzi/soaker tub in my life!

The last two days in Gatlinburg we went to Wonderworks museum which was really cool and interesting and also had a Magic show, and then we went hiking in the National Park (after I got us lost for almost an hour…. luckily it was a beautiful day and we were lost in a scenic park) and lastly, did a little bit more walking around in the “Old Mill” district

My grandparents live a little southwest of Gatlinburg and for the last two days of vacation we went down to see them! We arrived at lunchtime on Thursday and since it was raining, we spent awhile just catching up (it had been over 5 years since I had been to their house last) and playing with Cristopher. I had mentioned to Grandad that I had never shot a gun and had always wanted to, so after it stopped raining, Grandad took Cristian and I in the back yard and let us do some target practice! We shot a (I know I’m going to describe these wrong) 22 rifle, an old 22 handgun, and a 38 revolver. We shot at a cow feed bag about 30-40 ft away and I didn’t miss any 😀 Granted, they were all over the bag, but for my first time, I was pretty proud. We also went down to see and learn about their cows and chickens and bee hives (It was a very educational couple days for me). My aunt and cousins live down the road from my grandparents and they were able to come over for a little while that night to meet Cristopher!

That night was rough….Cristopher is definitely teething and has been waking up almost every hour through the night 😦 I feel so bad for him and REALLY hope he cuts his teeth soon so he won’t be in so much pain anymore. Needless to say, I wide awake at 7:30. and went down to help Happy and Grandad pick strawberries in their garden. We had a delicious breakfast and then we were on our way home.

trying banana for the first time and loving it!

All in all, it was a goooood vacation and we all had a lot of fun even though we missed our lovely dog, Coffee 😉

Back to reality!……

5 months old

yes, I know its more like 5.5 again… what can I say? Life gets away from me and writing a blog post is further down on my list of priorities.

Since I don’t work mornings, I’ve been reallyyyy bad about making myself get up at a decent hour in the mornings and establishing a morning routine for Cristopher and I. To add on to that, Cristopher hasn’t been falling asleep until midnight every night due to (again) lack of routine..It’s a vicious cycle and one that I’m now trying to get out of. Recently he’s been waking up 2-3 times a night between the hours of 12 and 7am (no REM sleep for mom 😦 )

I was talking to a new-mom friend who said her 6mo old has finally started sleeping from 630pm tip 530am with only waking up once around 2 to eat. I WANT THAT. She suggested to me the book she had used to help her structure her nights and mornings. Ideally I’d love for him to go to sleep around 730-8pm and wake up around 7am, but that means I’ll have to get up at 7am every morning. kill me. — but honestly, I’d rather be killed by waking up early than a baby who won’t sleep through the night.

SO I started trying all this two nights ago. The first night he screamed bloody murder every time his face touched his sheets for a good, solid hour. I would lay him down, try to soothe him, sing to him, talk to him, pat his back, rub his head, etc…. nothing. just screaming. After over an hour of that, I brought him in bed with me to sleep (I’m so weak, I know) and he still screamed the. whole. night. The next day, I went to a MUCH needed hot yoga class while a friend watched Cristopher (of course, he didn’t cry once while there. yay! but what a stinker). He fell asleep on the ride home afterwards and once I got home I took him out of his car seat to lay him in his bed and he was immediately WIDE AWAKE AND SCREAMING. how/WHY does he do that?! ah. It took me another hour to get him to fall asleep but once he did he (and I) slept for almost 2 hours. and they were glorious. I went to work that night and I was nervous for Cristian to put him to bed because I told him he needed to go down around 8 instead of letting him stay awake until I got home around 10:30, and he hates hearing him scream so I didn’t know if he’d “stay strong” so to speak in putting him to bed. I got a text around 9:30 saying he was asleep after not toooo much fussing and crying! YAY. and he was still asleep when I got home at 11, and still asleep when we started getting ready for bed around 1:30. He woke up around 2, was pretty fussy so I fed him and brought him to lay down next to me. Woke up again at 3:30 and I put him back in his bed where he stayed asleep until 7am!

AH. You probably didn’t want to hear a whole play-by-play of my last 2 days, but I was just so happy. It was such a good nights sleep for me even though I woke up twice. and I’m sure while we’re in Gatlinburg this week (vacation, woooo), his/our schedule will get a little messed up, but hopefully once we get back it’ll start to get better again.

Anyways, here’s his 5 month picture! plus a couple other recent ones. He’s getting so big and starting to sit up on his own now. uh-dorable.

A few weekends ago we went hiking off the Natchez Trace. It was such beautiful weather and so much fun! We were hiking for about an hour and on our way back somebody (not a boy) got us lost and we didn’t end up getting back to the car for another hour haha… oops! and then Monday was Cristopher’s first time going swimming! I want to start getting him used to the pool ASAP and learning to swim. He’s gonna be a little fish like his mom. The water was still a little cold, but he got his legs under and was splashing a little big 🙂