Our first long road trip

Well we left bright and early for our Montreal roadtrip this morning. Trev and I were up at 5:30am. We woke Joel up at 6:00am. We were hoping that he would just fall asleep as soon as we got moving in the car, but that didn't happen. In hindsight I guess we should have just left around 7:30am when he normally wakes up. He slept the amount that he normally would today in the car, but he got up earlier. So he's pretty tired now. My concern was that he would sleep for too long in the car and not sleep at night, but that didn't happen at all.

I would say the drive here couldn't have gone any better. With a little help from Joel's soother, we were able to drive the whole way with very limited crying/fussing. We fed him breakfast in the car and lunch at McDonalds (where there was a school group of kids who looked like they were maybe in grade 6 of which every single girl came up and checked him out and giggled at him and made faces at him. So much for a quick stop...Joel was so distracted by all the girls it took us forever to get out of there!). We made only 2 stops the whole way (one 10 minute stop and about an hour for lunch and gas) and we made it to the hotel in 9 hours. A long drive, but it actually didn't seem that long! We would have made it to the hotel about a half hour sooner if it wasn't for a flaming car on the highway that had traffic backed up. I have no clue what happened. It didn't look like an accident. There was just a van totally engulfed in flames with billowing black smoke coming from it!

I am really happy with our hotel. I was a bit nervous about this. I searched long and hard for a good hotel that wasn't too expensive. We wanted a suite so that we could put Joel to bed and still be able to sit up and watch TV (although Trev and I are so exhausted we are likely going to go to bed with Joel tonight). Our hotel has a kitchenette (great so we can prepare Joel's breakfast, keep bottles cold etc) and it has a separate bedroom. It's not fancy, but it looks clean and the price was right.

Good things:
- kitchen
- separate bedroom
- internet in our room
- close to subway station
- lots of good restaurants nearby
- ceramic tiles (not so creepy for Joel to crawl around on)
- we heard a baby in the room next to us so I won't feel quite so bad if Joel is crying in the night (or screeching at the top of his lungs during the day as seems to be his favourite thing to do today)

Bad things:
- no microwave (weird I think)
- ceramic tiles (it's hard to keep Joel from cracking his head open)

Unfortunately the trip got off to not such a good start when Trev was carrying a bin full of stuff up the stairs of the hotel (a plastic collapsable bin) and it broke and all of the contents went crashing down the metal staircase. The hotel manager came running (Trev said it sounded like an explosion). The only casualty was one jar of baby food which broke. The hotel manager was nice enough to get Trev a cardboard box to pack the stuff up in. The only expensive thing that fell was my pump (which was $400). It still seems to be working fine though.

It is very warm here and we were hot and tired by the time we got here. I unpacked everything while Trev carried the stuff in from the car, brought the car to the parking garage and entertained Joel. I feel fairly organized now. We decided to just go out and get something for dinner that we could bring back to our hotel room because we were tired. We got a pizza and now we're back at our room, just about ready to put Joel to bed.

I was wondering how the heck we were going to haul all of Joel's stuff around with us all day. I am used to our big stroller with a giant basket. But the smaller stroller we bought for this trip has a teeny tiny basket. But I had forgotten that our diaper bag has straps that attach it to the stroller! Genius! Small backpack goes in the small basket, big diaper bag hangs from the stroller handles, maps, camera and various other small things go in the little stroller caddy and Trev and I have our hands free! I'm amazed! I told Trevor we should have brought a stroller along with us on all our other trips (even though we didn't have a baby) because we are always used to carrying stuff!
There are downsides to the stroller though. The main drag near our hotel is set up so that every single store or restaurant has about 4 steps you have to go down to get into it. This means we have to carry the stroller up and down steps if we want to go in anywhere. Hopefully not all of the streets are like that!

Well I told Trev on the way here that we should have brought a journal! We always have brought a journal along on our trips, but I didn't even think about it for this trip. But instead, I'll just blog. It's my online journal! Weather looks excellent for the next 4 days so hopefully we'll luck out and they don't change the forecast on us!