Nocturnal...

We have arrived at home!  A list of a few things we've done in the last 24 hours would be sleep, ride a train, eat, play, and cry.  All these things are pretty normal in the home of a two year old, we've just decided to do them at unconventional times of the day and night.  As Lindsey said a couple days ago, we arrived in Chicago a day earlier than we'd expected...pretty sure that was my fault, got confused on the international date line + flight times... oh well.  So we spent our first night as three Americans in Chi-town.  Ivan went to sleep around 8pm...parents felt pretty good about that...we get a wake up call from the crib at 2:00am...Jenga!!  So the new family of three is playing with hot wheels and mega blocks until about about 4am when we put him back in the crib...because we wanted to be up by 6am to make our train.  That resulted in a child crying in his crib until mom or dad brought him into bed with them.  Fyi, it's virtually impossible to sleep with a 2 year in bed with you.  He's moving all the time, rotating, pushing, whipping, squirming...and thankfully sleeping too, somehow.

So the adults are up at 6, bags get packed, again, boy gets put in the carrier, we're headed out the door.  We meet up with my parents and Lindsey's parents to all ride the train home together.  At Union Station, I was able to reward my body with some extremely delicious hot cakes from the internationally renowned golden arches.  Once on the train, Ivan did great.  Of course, he was the star of the trip.  Our parents were great, it was so nice of them to come up and spend time with us before we cocoon into our home together.

When we arrived in Macomb, we were blessed to see many familiar faces!  We are so thankful for you guys!  We hope to see everybody again soon.

Then it was time for our first ride in Mommy's car and a car seat...  Things went surprisingly well.  We made it 20 minutes in good spirits, then a touch of fuss, and then lights out.

Once home we unloaded the car, put the boy down for a nap and started unloading the bags.  One bag had an oatmeal explosion.  Oatmeal in the clothes, in the toys, and in Lindsey's blow dryer.  Around 2 we woke Ivan up, who wasn't too keen on that decision, but eventually came around.  We played the rest of the afternoon inside and out.  He walked in grass, for I assume the first time, and we walked down the driveway along the first cornfield he's seen up close. 

The evening consisted of noodles, bath, and book reading.  We laid him down around 7pm, thinking, we're good, we're kicking this time change thing in the pants.  We'll have him on the right schedule in no time...   Well, no time became 1:30am and he was awake and chipper.  I finally decided I'd get up with him for a little play time.

A happy carpet mower at 2am.

Lindsey got up a short while later and we folded laundry, played with blocks, and do what normal toddlers do at 2pm, not 2am.  So around 4ish am we decided to try bed again.  That was a failure initially.  He whimpered and cried off and on until 5, then we decided to pull him into bed with us...you think we'd learn.  It worked.  Daddy was asleep, Mommy was asleep, and Ivan was asleep.  Asleep so well in fact, that we woke up at 2pm.  No kidding.  I can honestly say I don't know if I've ever slept until 2pm in my life.  But I did some thinking, since waking up Friday morning...which would have been 6pm Thursday evening in the US, Lindsey and I have gotten maybe 6 hours of sleep.  Still, no excuse, and this totally blew our sleep schedule plan up for Ivan.  But we'll get on the right track.  Learned lesson...we'll set alarm clocks for awhile now.  Lindsey did ask about that last night...I said no, there's no way we'll sleep late... :)