Three Peerys in a Pod: Beach Babies

We spent a long weekend at the beach (arriving Saturday, leaving Tuesday). It was the babies' first out of town trip and their first time to go to the beach. It was awesome!

Thomas's sister, Ashley, and her husband Zack rented a ~~house~~ mansion at Folly Beach for a week. They were so kind to invite us to come for any or all of the week we wanted. Thomas was able to take 2 days off work and our plans were set. We feel so fortunate that Ashley and Zack let us come and spend time with the family. Tara and Matt live in Charleston so they spent the weekend there. Tara spent the night each night but worked Monday and Tuesday and would come after she got off work. We got to keep Leece during the day. Matt spent the weekend with us but also had to work on Monday and Tuesday. MaSha came down from Tazewell to spend the first part of the week as well. It was such a fun family gathering.

The drive down was our first long-ish road trip with the babies. As with anything, it's a big unknown until you try it so we didn't honestly know how the trip would go. Let me tell you, the babies were GREAT! We strategically left during naptime and they slept and slept!

We stopped halfway in Columbia to eat lunch and feed the boys. Ashley, Zack, Taylor and Anna were only a few miles behind us and met us for lunch. They were normal and went into the restaurant to eat, while we were the weirdos who ate in the car, with our lunches on our laps. We felt like taking the boys out and getting them in the stroller/carriers would be too much of a hassle. So Thomas went inside, ordered it to-go and brought it out and we ate ghetto-style. After we ate, we mixed bottles and fed the boys. I wish I would have taken a picture of this. Here's how our van is configured. The van has 2 captain's chairs in the second row and one fold-down mini-seat in the middle and then a full 3rd row. We've removed one of the captain's chairs from the 2nd row to leave some room so we can get to the 3rd row. We have 1 car set in the captain's chair in the 2nd row and the other 2 car seats are in the 3rd row. The space in between the 2 car seats in the back is not big enough for a normal sized adult. That being said, I climbed into the 3rd row and squatted there in between Stokes and William and fed them their bottles. My rear end couldn't fit down between the ginormous car seats to sit down and my feet got tingly and fell asleep. Thomas, meanwhile, took Ryan out of his car seat in the captain's chair and brought him up front to the driver's seat to feed him. We got the feeding done pretty quickly, but it wasn't pretty. Then we realized that we didn't have a good space to change their diapers. Keep in mind that the van was packed pretty full! So we folded down the little mini-seat in the 2nd row (in which I was sitting during the trip) to put the boys on to change diapers after the feed. The opportunity for more "awkward family photos" ensued. Thomas was standing in the front, leaning over the middle console to reach the mini-seat in the 2nd row. Meanwhile I was wedged between the 2 car seats in the back and unable to move. I unbuckled Stokes and William one by one and ~~gracefully~~ clumsily handed them up to Thomas, who would lay them down on the mini-seat for the diaper change. I would hold the baby to make sure he didn't fall off the mini-seat while Thomas changed the diaper. When we were done, I shimmied my way out of the 3rd row and back into my mini-seat that we folded back up and we realized that with all the maneuvering and clumsiness that we just dealt with, it would have been easier to unbuckle the boys and feed them/change diapers with a little more room. Go figure. Side note: the minivan is awesome and has a DVD player in the back, so although I was squished and spent hours sitting in a mini-seat, I did get to watch "Bridesmaids" - hilarious!

After that brief (I felt good that we got all this accomplished, complete with a gas fill up and a little socializing with Ashley and family, in one hour) stop, we were back on the road! The second leg of the trip was also uneventful and the boys did not cry one single time. I was a proud mama and realized that I should not be scared of road trips.

We got to Folly around 3:45 and got the boys and the car unloaded. And when I say "we" got the car unloaded, I mean that Thomas and Zack got the car unloaded. :) We then got our tour of the ~~house~~ mansion and got bedrooms picked out. I am not kidding when I say that this house was amazing! It had plenty of rooms and bathrooms, a small pool on the downstairs porch, an awesome open floor area with kitchen/great room/dining room, a 3rd floor with pool table and a rooftop deck. We got our own room and the boys got their own room. Their room was big enough to put 3 pack n plays in comfortably! Anyway, we spent the evening getting all the babies and kids fed, bathed, pj'ed, and off to bed and never got to spend any time on the beach. We had a great time catching up, eating shrimp and grits Tara made, and drinking wine though!

That night the babies slept in pack n plays for the first time and didn't take too well to the change. It was a little tough. Thomas and I both got up several times and let's just say we were tired the next morning. Party foul, well let's make that beach foul, we eventually decided that Stokes would just have to cry for a little while and hopefully fall back to sleep since we had been up so much with him. The bad part was that Matt and Tara's room was directly over the babies' room and Ashley has her "mom ears" so by letting him cry it out a while, we kept both Ashley and Tara up as well. Oops. Our bad.

On Sunday it was super windy. The wind was blowing so hard that the sand was flying everywhere and we were forced to sit on the hard sand near the water to avoid being stung by the sand and wind! We took the babies out for a short while but were worried that it was too windy for them. They did OK but that was probably just because we held them the whole time! While the boys napped in the afternoon, Thomas and I got to go out to the beach and read and relax and Zack stayed inside just in case any of them woke up. At some point, we went inside to check on him and found all 3 boys awake and up in the living room. They had all woken up and Zack, bless his heart, got them all dressed and upstairs. He was doing a great job entertaining them, but I'm sure he felt a little overwhelmed taking care of all 3 at the same time, especially when you're not used to it! Poor guy! We didn't go back out after that until the evening when we had a photographer friend of Tara and Matt's come by to take some family pictures for us. I'll be sure to post those later. Remember though that it was extremely windy that day...which means we'll all have beautiful hairdos!

Sunday night was low-country boil (prepared by Matt) night followed by a game of girls vs. boys Catch Phrase and we hung out on the rooftop deck. So much fun! We all had some great laughs.

Sunday night went much like Saturday night. Lots of crying and not so much sleeping. Ouch. I ended up moving to the bed in the boys' room sometime around 3 AM and stayed in there the rest of the night.

On Monday, we were really starting to find our groove. We started out the day with a walk in the morning. You should have seen us. We had 2 strollers (Leece rode in one and William rode in the other) that Thomas and Zack were pushing, MaSha was wearing Ryan, I was wearing Stokes, and Ashley was carrying Taylor and Anna's buckets for their shell collections. What a crew! The walk was so refreshing! The weather was a lot better on Monday so we got the boys back out on the beach in the afternoon and it went a lot better this time around. We got each of them to put their feet in the water, but mostly they just napped and hung out in our laps. Since Stokes is the only one that is sitting up, they didn't do a whole lot of "playing" on the beach this time around. Monday evening was pretty low-key but we went up to the rooftop deck after dinner again to end out the night.

Monday night had some crying, but was much better than the 2 previous nights. I think the boys were starting to get used to their pack n plays. I did end up sleeping in their room for the 2nd half of the night, but got a good bit more sleep than I had on Saturday and Sunday.

Tuesday morning we got the boys out for a walk on the beach again with the whole crew and this time we were more efficient getting everyone strapped in, buckled up and out the door. We stayed at the beach through naptime/adult lunchtime and got the car loaded while the babies slept. After their 1:30 bottle we sadly had to hit the road to come back to Greenville. I was so bummed to leave. I felt like we had just gotten to the point of being adjusted to a new environment and then it was time to pack it up. The ride back went well also, except that they napped so well that afternoon at the beach house, Stokes woke up and got bored and cranky. After the feeding fiasco of the trip down, we decided not to wake the babies unless they woke up hungry. So I tried to feed Stokes when he was fussing but he was not very interested and Ryan and William slept the whole way home. All in all, they were all really great travelers.

Lessons learned:
1. During the drive, when stopping to eat and feed babies, take them out of their car seats and make room for whatever needs to be done.
2. The boys need time to adjust when we travel (i.e. they didn't sleep much at all the first 2 nights - ughhhhhhhhh), so plan for a week if possible.
3. We traveled fairly light (we didn't bring the kitchen sink) and it worked out pretty well, so now we know the minimum amount of baby stuff we can get by with.
4. Having extra hands around to carry, hold, feed babies is ALWAYS a good idea!
5. Driving during naptime is better than after naptime.

Favorite memories:
1. Watching our nieces, Taylor and Anna, play with the boys and Leece. Taylor was so interested in all the babies and was a BIG help keeping them entertained. She even helped us feed them a few times!
2. Watching Leece eat a cupcake (family birthday celebration post-birthday!). So funny.
3. Sitting on the beach, reading my book, with my babies nearby snoozing away.
4. Watching the boys dip their toes in the water for the first time.
5. Nighttime toasts on the 3rd floor deck.
6. Food - shrimp and grits, low country boil, crab cakes, boiled peanuts, etc. - we had some good eating!
7. Spending time with our beautiful, sweet, fun-loving family members.