On Thursday of last week the girls and I drove to Iowa to visit with family there. On Friday we headed to Moline, IL for a cousin's wedding reception. I have to admit, I was really worried about the car ride. Alina is a long way away from liking her car seat. Thursday we had a 4 hour drive and we stopped a couple times to eat as well. She slept for maybe 15 minutes when we first got into the car and later for another 10 minutes or so. Not good. I left at naptime in the hopes that she and Reina would sleep. Reina didn't sleep much either. For the last hour Alina cried to get out. I stopped a couple times to try to calm her, but all she really wanted was out. We arrived Thursday evening at my mother-in-law's house and despite lack of sleep she was doing great! I was a bit surprised that she wasn't as clingy as I had expected. Sleep that night was difficult and I ended up with her in bed with me. Friday we made the 2 hour drive to Moline, again at naptime. This time she slept for almost an hour. We got to our hotel and she had a great time exploring=)
Sometime during our couple hours at the hotel before Quentin joined us Alina decided she was through crawling and started walking everywhere! She fell a lot but would get right back up and try again. Later, at the reception she was trying to walk all over as well and I got a video of her toddling toward me.
They had dancing at the reception and our girls were having a great time! Reina, Abbie, and Lauren were out on the dance floor for most of the night. Reina made frequent trips to the cookie table to try to grab another cookie so we had to keep our eye on her=) I found a spot out of the way of all the dancers for Alina to walk and dance. She loves music. She starts bouncing up and down and waving her arms. It is really cute. I tried to post a video of the girls dancing but all my videos are too big for blogger. I keep getting an error message.
We are back home now and settling back in. Alina has been fussy and clingy for the last 2 days, but I expected she would have some adjusting to do. I was really worried the trip would mess things up for her. She couldn't know that we would be coming back home soon, the trip only meant new changes for her and I know it made her anxious. I hope, though, that coming back home helped her to understand that this is a permanent place for her. I know we have a ways to go there. It would help so much if she were able to understand me, but of course she is still learning our language and she is only almost 18 months old. We'll just have to show her every day that this is home and we are her family=)
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