The morning after Christmas, Brian, Dominic, and I packed up the car – filled completely to capacity for a 2 night trip – and headed up to Asheville, North Carolina to meet Brian’s family at the Grove Park Inn for a couple of days. I was a little worried about driving up there in the snow, but Brian did a great job driving and the roads weren’t too bad. Seeing the snow on the ground by the highways was a nice way to pass to the time on the drive. I took lots of pictures with the camera that Brian gave me for Christmas. We left around noon to correspond with Dominic’s nap time in an effort to have him sleep most of the ride up there. Unfortunately, that didn’t work too well because Dominic woke up after 30 minutes. He fell asleep again for another half hour at the end of the car ride when we covered his car seat with a blanket to make it darker. I fed him his bottle of breastmilk in the car by reaching my arm back from the front seat. It was better than having to stop to feed him as I had had to do on previous car trips. Overall, the car trip wasn’t too bad.
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| the beautiful ride up to Asheville |
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| Our view of Dominic during the car ride. |
We stayed at the absolutely gorgeous Grove Park Inn thanks to my generous in-laws. Brian and I had talked about staying there together for years, so we were both very excited. Brian had been there a couple of other times, while this was a first for both Dominic and me. The Inn was decorated with Christmas trees and decorations and had Ginger Bread houses in various amazing designs throughout the building. I think everything being so Christmassy really added to the ambiance and made it even more beautiful than normal. All of that combined with the snow made it an amazing stay. Apparently, this amount of snow was fairly a lot for Asheville too because most of the restaurants were closed the night we arrived and by the end of our stay the Grove Park Inn was even running low on necessities like hot chocolate.
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| The Grove Park Inn...absolutely gorgeous! |
The second day of our stay, we went to the Biltmore Estate, which was also beautiful especially in the snow and with all of the Christmas decorations. This was the highlight of the trip for me since I have always wanted to go there. Since being a kid, I’ve enjoyed going to historic homes like this, but this one was larger than most of those I had been to growing up on various family trips. What also made this house tour different for me is having a baby along with us. We brought the stroller but Dominic refused to sit in it. So Brian, his dad, and I alternated who carried Dominic around and who pushed his empty stroller around. This included on the stairs, but luckily there was an elevator for 2 of the floors. It was an old elevator with an elevator operator and everything, making it fun to ride!
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| Our family in front of the Biltmore :) |
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| The Biltmore Estate |
Sleeping made for an interesting challenge with Dominic over the trip. Since we were sharing a room with him, Brian and I had to sit in the room in complete darkness for Dominic’s naps - that is if Dominic even managed to nap on time or at all. We obviously couldn’t leave the room because we didn’t want to leave him alone in there and didn’t have a monitor. Our room ended up being really cold especially on the ground, so his pack n play was freezing when he slept. I don’t know if it was because of the cold or the new place and bed…or both, but Dominic did not want to sleep there at all. The only place he would fall asleep was on Brian’s chest. This seemed to wear thin on Brian after a day or two. The 1st night Dominic slept through the night fine, but the 2nd night he woke up crying around 3am and had a hard time getting back to sleep for us. He of course woke up extra early on both days as well. Normally, we would have let him “cry it out” a little more, but being in a hotel with other guests made that impossible. Plus we’re honestly not used to having him cry too much like that, so it was a bit alarming.
Dominic has been on 4 overnight trips now and to 8 different states, and we seem to learn something from each exersion. Dominic’s first trip was to New Orleans at 2 months old for 2 nights with my mom and me for our family reunion down there. He did a really good job on that trip, but the lesson learned on that one was to bring the pack n play and not use the hotel cribs. One look at the disgusting chew marks and the oversized sheet (aka suffocation hazard) in the crib made me opt to have Dominic sleep in the bed with me. Unfortunately, I was so worried about rolling over on him during the night that I didn’t get the best sleep those 2 nights. The next trip was to Tennessee for a night when Dominic was about 4 months old. There he again did fine except that he kept Brian awake with his cute, little baby noises at the time. The lesson we took from that trip was that Dominic needed to sleep by my side of the bed instead of Brian’s since the noises don’t bother me. Dominic’s 3rd trip was to Florida where we stayed in my parents’ condo at the beach. That one went well because we had multiple bedrooms, and it was just before he started crawling. The lesson we learned on that trip though was that Dominic needs to be in a very dark room for his naps. Of course, those trips were all pre-crawling/pre-cruising, making things much easier. Lesson learned from this Asheville trip…if at all possible, next time we travel we must get a suite instead of a single room. This way we have a separate room for Dominic to nap and sleep in where we don’t bother him.
I’m hoping that once Dominic can walk that things will go more smoothly in some ways in traveling. I think it’s safe to say that as much as Brian and I love taking fun trips like this one that we probably won’t take a trip for awhile or at least until Dominic is down to 1 nap or fewer. Traveling is definitely far more stressful and challenging with a baby especially while they're still taking multiple naps each day, and it appears to be only getting worse the older Dominic gets. I’m sure - or at least hoping - in another year or two it will begin to get easier, but then we’ll most likely (hopefully) be dealing with the same issues but with another baby. Before having Dominic, I never truly realized all of the work that went into a little trip once you have a baby. How naive I was. This trip to Asheville was completely worth these challenges though. It was so fun to go to such a beautiful place at such an amazing time with such wonderful family. Brian and I definitely want to go back again...just maybe kid-free next time and when it's a bit warmer out! :)
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