A Baptism, Family and Friends

Last Weekend was a lot of fun, but very tiring for this Mom.  Since my husband had responsibilities in Nebraska, Samuel and I made our way to Wisconsin for my cousin's son's baptism.  Thankfully, my cousin, Anna, and her husband were willing to drive with me.

Stranger Danger:
We spent a lot of time at my Rachel's (my cousin whose son, Josiah, got baptized) house, with lots of family and friends.  With how Samuel has been starting his stranger danger phase I was reasonably concerned that I would have a little cling-on the whole weekend.  My Dad arrived at my house on Thursday so he could caravan with us on Friday and his arrival proved to me that my concerns were valid.  Samuel did not warm up to his Opa until he played cello for him, then he was more willing to go him.

On Saturday morning when we first went to Rachel's house, Samuel was somewhat apprehensive, so I kept him with me mainly at first.  I was very thankful that he didn't burst out and cry the minute he saw someone new!  As the day went on he warmed up nicely to everyone that was there.  I was even able to hand him off to someone without him fussing at all!  The rest of the weekend was that way.  He was held by plenty of family without me even in the room and didn't fuss at all.  Thank you Lord for a calm baby!

He may have been a calm and happy baby around people, but he wasn't really much of a sleeping baby, the entire weekend.  Friday he started his night early due to the car ride and after getting everything set up at the hotel and fed it took him 45 minutes to fall asleep (normally he falls asleep within 5).  At least it was more of just an off and on whimper and not a full out cry!  Then when 4am came around he was ready to be up and awake!  So I held him in a sitting position after feeding him thinking to myself, kid, I only got about 3.5hrs of sleep....  He did let me sleep a little longer so I was able to start the day feeling reasonably rested.

On Saturday he barely napped however.  Which when he barely naps it never bodes well for the night. We did drive over and see my college flute teacher and I dropped my cousin Anna off at CUW to see some missionary friends that were there for the missions conference.  While there she get to be part of a historical event.  A deer jumped through a window into the cafeteria (which apparently sounded like several stacks of coffee cups piled to the ceiling had just fallen over), ran around the cafeteria for a while and chased a student before jumping back out a different window.  Oh and by deer we mean buck!  If you are a facebook friend of mine a posted a video that I found on another friend's wall of it.  How fun would it be to be the student that could say, "Remember when we were eating supper and the deer chased you?"

Back to the topic.  :-)
So Saturday night was theoretically a great night because we got to turn our clocks back and get an extra hour of sleep right?  Not for me.  Samuel woke up just about every hour being somewhat inconsolable, so that extra hour just made a long night longer...  Ahh the joys of being a parent!  Needless to say I was rather tired yesterday after 2 days of very little sleep.  In fact I had an eye twitching all day I was so tired.  It was then that I was very thankful to have gone with my cousin and her husband, it would not have been safe for me to drive home!

At Church on Sunday I ran into two of my college friends.  Which was not really random.  One of them was a missionary in Taiwan with my cousin Anna and was in her wedding and the other has also been a missionary to a few places and know my cousin, Tim.  So it was very good to be able to catch up with them and hear about how things are going for them.

The baptism went very well, Josiah didn't even fuss for it.  That afternoon we welcomed him into God's family with a huge lunch!  All afternoon it seemed people were stopping by to say hello and congratulate the family.

All in all, despite the huge lack of sleep, it was a very good weekend.  Thankfully after I fed Samuel when we got him he went right to sleep and stayed asleep until his normal wake-up time (despite the time change even, we are soo thankful!).  The last thing both Ben or I wanted to do was be up with a baby with how tired we both were from our weekends.  So thankfully Sam played along with that idea quite nicely!