daytripping & weekend fun

Rowan has had a fair bit of car-time the last couple of days. On Friday, I went into Almonte with her to buy groceries and yesterday, Nigel and I went into Ottawa to visit some friends and eat yummy Korean/Japanese food at Seoul House.

Here is Rowan sleeping in her car seat, with the snuggly animal cover lent to us by Greg & Madeleine. Thanks again!
Sleeping cutie

Friday's trip:
The trip into Almonte wasn't the best trip I've ever made with Rowan. Usually, if I feed her right before we get in the car, she falls asleep and stays that way for at least an hour and a half. This was based on weeks of research, so I was pretty confident. :-) However, on this day, she did not follow her pattern. She woke up upon arrival in Almonte and was very CRANKY.

So I went into the lovely Jacaranda Cafe to feed Rowan and have some lunch myself. It took me an hour and a half to get the baby to chill out, by which time my chai and grilled sandwich were also quite chilled.

Jacaranda doesn't have a suitable bathroom for changing a cranky infant, so we walked up the hill to the library. Their bathroom was poorly laid out, and the light was out of order, but they did have a changing "box" that worked just fine. Tim Hortons is the best place I've found to change the baby when in Almonte.

Thankfully, the drive to the grocery store lulled her back to sleep and I was able to do the groceries without much incident. Rowan continued to be awake and cranky most of the afternoon once we arrived back home, but she blessed us with SEVEN consecutive hours of sleep on Friday night. Glorious!

Saturday's trip:
Saturday's trip was much better, mostly because of Rowan's daddy's cleverness. Boy, I love that guy. He's a super dad.

Nigel suggested tossing the wind-up swing into the car, since it has a wonderful calming effect on Rowan and can transform a cranky baby into a happy and/or sleeping baby. Anyhow. More on that in a second.

We arrived at the restaurant after a harrowing Bridgehead baby change experience. Since we were running early and suspected that the restaurant's bathroom facilities would not be ideal for baby-changing (we were very right), we stopped at a Bridgehead coffeehouse. We are so glad we did! Rowan had managed to spread yellow poo absolutely everywhere both in her diaper and the inside of her onesies. A HUGE mess that would have been even more of a nightmare in a poorly equipped, cramped Chinatown bathroom.

Once at Seoul House, Rowan demanded food. Lots of it. And she wasn't having any of this fall back to sleep after eating business. Thus began her fairly typical evening awake-cranky period. *sigh* I was really looking forward to eating warm food...

But wait! What did Nigel put in the trunk? The miraculous swing-o-matic! It allowed us to eat our ENTIRE meal without interruption. Including dessert. As long as we kept it wound up, she kept sleeping.

After the restaurant, we headed over to G&Ms for socializing and board games. Rowan (removed from her swing) began to crank it up again. More food required! In any case, after Rowan had eaten, the wonderous device allowed me to play a full game of Shadows over Camelot, a board game which takes about 1.5 hours to play. This was very satisfying.