D.C. Trip Recap

We left Wednesday afternoon to drive up to Washington, D.C. to visit my family and to attend my brother's graduation from Marine Officer Candidate School. With an almost 3 month old, and with it being the first road trip we have ever taken as a family, I do admit that I was pretty stressed out trying to get out of the house. I can barely make it to the grocery store, much less a 7 hour drive! However, it was an awesome time and we enjoyed our time visiting my dad and his wife, as well as, my sister! It was a Settelen family reunion!

(Look how big my little boy is getting! He's just about three months here! If you don't want to read a recap of Micaiah's time on the trip, skip the next two paragraphs to read more on Tyler's graduation ceremony.)

We decided to drive up in the afternoon thinking that it would be easier on Micaiah. I'm not so sure about that because the drive home on Sunday seemed much easier on all of us (during the day). The trip was pretty taxing on Micaiah and myself. Taxing for me, because I had to sleep in the same room as Micaiah. That meant I heard every noise, even with two fans going and white noise on the ipod. I slept horribly. I also couldn't let Micaiah cry, because of the fact that we were staying in a D.C. condo and out of respect for other sleeping persons. We went out A LOT and had some pretty long days eating out with family, attending the graduation, and just visiting with all the family, as well as, doing Christmas. We had a lot of fun, but it seemed everywhere we went Micaiah had a melt down due to being overtired. There wasn't much I could do about that. I tried keeping him on a similar routine as the one we were doing at home, but after the first day, I realized that was pretty much impossible. Hart just told me to let it go and enjoy myself, so I stopped counting how long Micaiah was awake and just let him sleep when he fell asleep and be awake when he was awake. I do admit, as well, that I was pretty concerned that it would take me like 3 more weeks, at least, getting him back on a routine once at home.

However, that was NOT the case. We walked into the door of our house and I just walked Micaiah around the house and he just looked around at everything. I took him in his room and he just looked around at the things in his room. He knew we were home. I swaddled him for the last nap of the day and I started our naptime routine. He started crying, JUST like we had never left. (Micaiah started protest crying everytime I put him down to nap a week or two ago. I just carry on like he isn't crying and he will go to sleep as soon as I leave). He cried for two minutes and was out. I thought to myself, there is no way this will be this easy. However, when it was time for bedtime, I did the same routine for bedtime, put him down and he just went to bed with barely any crying at all and he slept til the normal time when he wakes up during the night. Okay, Nana, you were RIGHT. I do need to RELAX! All I can say is that God is good, abundantly and exceedingly, and now that I know that Micaiah readjusts so easily, I can do that. You live and learn with your first! You also do not realize how encouraging for me it really is to see the fruit of all those weeks of working so hard to get Micaiah to sleep actually be paid off! I also think that this trip helped make both of us more flexible. I know that my baby can handle more and deviating from our routine every now and then is good for all of us!

Now to the real reason we went on our trip. Tyler graduated from Marine OCS!!!! After 10 long weeks of grueling hard work, he is now a first lieutenant, an officer, in the United States Marine Corp!

Sad this next one turned out a little blurry!

Both my mom and my dad were so proud to have such an accomplished son. I wish I could post some of the pictures of my dad and my brother. My dad is a retired Master Gunnery Sergeant from the Marines. I am not allowed to post photos of him online due to the type of work that he does, for security reasons, but it was so cool to see him pin the gold bars onto Tyler's uniform. He gave him a speech and then the family pinned him. Also, after our family pinning ceremony, General John Paxton, a three star general in the presiding President's Joint Staff, came up to Tyler and shook hands with him and my father. He passed along one of his coins to Tyler as they shook. That was a pretty cool honor that few received at the graduation.
We had an amazing time together as a family and really enjoyed our trip! Usually, we visit the National Christmas tree and do a little more around the city when we go up, but this year, due to how small Micaiah is, we didn't want to drag him about any more than we already were! I look forward to next Christmas when Micaiah is a little over one years old!