Hampton Township

Angus, Maddie, Gordie, and Patrick crossed the Mississippi River by land for the first time! Sarah crossed it for the 15th +/- time. Welcome to Iowa!

Prior to this we made stops in Genoa, Ohio and Geneseo, Illinois for gas. Ohio thruway rest area was gorgeous and very clean, especially at 2:30am. The land of Lincoln had the cleanest and most cheerful Mc.Donald's for breakfast full of an older crowd having coffee and chatting on a Saturday morning. Don't blame them, cheap coffee and a nice pristine environment would appeal to any of us as a meeting location. Pancakes were good.

Mission Impossible #1: Getting a 21 month old to sleep in a camper!

It took us a while to figure out how to get Patrick to sleep last night. PJ's, books, quiet time and then we tried to put him in his Pac 'n Play that we thought we had cleverly placed in the nook left by the table. The P'n P could not move in there. A truly perfect fit that we thought was ingenious. A much better option than the tub that Sarah got at 6 weeks old going to Disney World. Those were the days...

Back to the sleeping dilema. So we had a drowsy, calm Patrick. Layed him down in the crib and he proceeded to jump up and use his arms and hands to pull on the couch cushions up and out of the crib all the while screaming: "truck!" "Dada, truck!" The kid loves his trucks and I-80 is full of them. Clearly, there was too much action to fall asleep within view of the trucks passing by.

Try #2 had Patrick back in his carseat. Complete fail, all he did was scream at such an ear piercing volume that we all got headaches and Sarah became certain this was payback for her rather loud voice as a child. Not that she's loud now, oh no, she's definitely not teaching all the administrators near her classroom Beginning Spanish.

So we moved on to try #3, co-sleeping on the back bunk. It turned into a half hour of wrestling a baby aligator from one side to the other. He then turned into Chip or was is Dale?, crawling up and down Sarah adjusting his head on her, then pulling her arms around him, then switching to another position on her bladder, where he hadn't been for 21 months and then he would sigh and the moment we thought he was asleep a truck would barrel by and he would scream "truck!" again and we were back to square one. Grrr...

Try #4 was a bit more unconventional, but it finally worked. We put the Pac 'n Play on the back bed, covered the see-through sides with blankets, pulled the curtain around him and said goodnight. 30 seconds of angry Patrick and he was out. Finally, baby aligators do sleep. He made it 11 hours with one wake up at the Ohio gas stop. Stupid lights from the gas station shining in the vent above his crib. Gotta velcro a cover for that next. But he slept which meant so did everyone else who wasn't up driving or chatting to help the driver stay focused. M & G are amazing helpers!

Approximately 1,134 miles behind us! Next stop will be Nebraska for gas and then on to the Gray's (Sarah's sister & family) in Denver!!!Read more