Caroline's First Campout!

Jake & I, remembering the good ol' days of sleeping under the stars as kids, thought it would be fun to give Caroline the experience. So we dug out the sleeping bag and a foam mattress for Caroline and then hauled the mattress off our hide-a-bed along with every blanket in the house out to the deck. Clayton was cozy and snoozing in his crib and we had the monitor outside, so nobody was left alone or neglected. It took Caroline about 20 minutes to really calm down and snuggle into her sleeping bag (after being in & out and in our "bed" about 5 times). Then she lay still and gazed at the stars for a while and favored us with her sweet little rendition of "Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star." And then she was OUT. She slept like a log the entire night. Not so for her parents. I don't know if it's because we were uncomfortable or because we were worried about Caroline (I kept checking to make sure she was warm enough and pulling a blanket up around her head which she would promptly pull down in her sleep). But both of us kept waking up every 30 minutes to an hour. We were stiff and tired in the morning but discovered that we both slept deeply enough in the early morning hours to miss the excitement and sound of the truck when Jake's brother & his wife left the house at 4:30 on their way to the hospital in labor 5 weeks early. (By the way, everything is fine. Sophie Elisabeth arrived on Wednesday at 2:29 p.m. after all attempts to stop labor failed. But at 5 lbs 9 oz and breathing on her own, they figured she was actually three weeks early, not five.)