Minneapolis

So I know everyone thinks we're crazy, but we did another six hour trek to Minneapolis to go to Ikea recently. I'm having a hard time remembering everything we went for now, although we spent a lot of time and way too much money there. The big purchase was a play kitchen for Lauren, and we ended up getting a lot of other little things for her there as well (some stools, a little table and chairs, an easel). Because our house is a) small and b) open floorplan, I insisted that any play kitchen that was going to be in view from the front door, living room, kitchen and dining room not be a pastel or primary color plastic monstrosity. I can be difficult.

So off we went to Minneapolis on a Friday morning for a long weekend. We stayed downtown (at the hotel we last stayed at with Miller, sniff) and although it wasn't exactly a real vacation, it was nice to get out of Kansas City for awhile. Lauren mostly tolerated the fact that we spent six hours in a row in Ikea. There were a few tantrums, but after letting her lay on the floor kicking and screaming in the food line at the cafeteria, instructing patrons behind us to "please just step over her and pretend like she's not there," receiving some knowing, understanding looks and some "you might be the worst parent we've ever seen" looks (those were from non kid-havers, I guarantee you. I'm now the person who, after receiving a look like that, thinks smugly "you have absolutely no clue. See you in five years."), we made it through mostly unscathed. We might have loaded the cart up with sheepskin throws and put her down for a nap in there. You do what you have to do.


Lauren LOVED staying in a hotel. Sean taught her how to jump on the bed (because why not?), which she loved, both before and after she fell off the bed and hit the floor pretty hard (right after the photo above was taken). Yes, we did sing "no more monkeys jumping on the bed" after the fall, but continued to jump on the bed anyway. Because you only live once. Lauren also loved room service, because there was no high chair in the room, so we just all sat on the bed and ate picnic-style.

We did run into some sleeping issues because the crib they sent up to the room was tiny and the mattress was so waterproof and crackly that Lauren just wasn't havin' it. So we rigged up a system where we pushed some chairs up against a loveseat so Lauren couldn't fall off. Which worked for part of the night, but then she ended up in the bed with us the rest of the night. To top it off it was daylight savings time change weekend, so her sleep schedule was thrown into a complete tizzy and we haven't recovered since. Sean and I repeat to each other every day, like a mantra, "at some point in the future there will be a day when we feel rested again." We don't especially care that it might be in 20 years, we just need to know that it will happen again. In the meantime we know enough to appreciate the fact that cuddling and playing with Laur in the wee hours of the morning won't last forever, so we are making the best of it.

No trip to Minneapolis is complete without a trip to the Mall of America. OK, it would be totally complete without a trip to the Mall of America. But we went anyway, because it has an aquarium and we thought Lauren would like it. She did, I think. I think she was more interested in the roller coaster in the middle of the mall, though. And by interested I mean fascinated and frightened.








After the aquarium and lunch at the mall on Sunday we headed back down south with a full car. Thanks to a portable DVD player and the 1970s animated movie "Charlotte's Web" purchased at a Cracker Barrel on the way up (Baby Einstein just wasn't cutting it), the drive up and down went pretty smoothly. Very successful weekend.