Travel and gift advice

Travel:
  We took our first vacation with Alexander.  We went up to Keystone (two hours away) for a week with my parents to enjoy the mountains and do some skiing.  It was nice to have my parents there so that we were able to switch off days skiing and babysitting Alexander.  Packing for this trip was interesting.  I'm pretty sure I brought everything of Alexander's except his furniture and swing.  I had made a list of stuff to bring according to each room.  Therefore I just went in the room with a bag, grabbed the stuff, checked it off the list and I was done.  It worked out pretty well.  We used everything I brought for him except I did over pack clothes for him.  We had a great week.  Of course, Alexander's schedule got completely thrown off by traveling, being on vacation,going out to dinner and the time change.  But once we got home it was back to normal in just a couple days.

Gift Advice:
  So lately my baby monitor has been acting up and not working all the time.  I'm thinking of returning it since I kept the receipt and box.  My advice to new parents is keep all boxes and receipts for your big items and electronics.  The good thing about keeping the bigger boxes is once he is done or outgrown something, we can store back in the box.  We have also had a few electronics just stop working on us so be sure to keep boxes and receipts for simple things like wipes warmer or white sound maker.  Also they say one way to prepare for the baby is wash all the clothes before the baby comes.  My advice is wash about half.  There was some clothes we didn't use and I wish I kept the tags on them.  Most places like Walmart, Target, and Kohl's will let you return some things for store credit if the tags are still on.  The reason we didn't use some of the clothes is that we received some short sleeve onesies.  We barely used any of them since Alexander was born in the middle of winter. Now any new clothes I receive I keep the tags on them until I want use.

Other updates:

Alexander is napping and sleeping in his crib finally.  He has been doing a good job so far.  However the past two nights he has woken up every three to four hours to feed.  I feel like we are going backwards with the sleeping at night except nothing could be as bad as the first month of his life.  I'm still debating in my head if there is something I can do to help Alexander sleep through the night or if he will just do it on his own.

I'm still going to my MOPs group and love it.  I have become friends with some other moms from the group and have starting hanging out with them outside of MOPs.  Yesterday we went to the zoo and had a great time with other moms and their kiddos.  Plus I'm always gaining advice from them since most of them have a toddler and have been through what I'm going through.   I'm excited to say that I will be assistant director of my MOPS group starting next fall.

Things we are looking forward too.

Eric's Mom, Linda, is coming to come stay with for us a week next Tuesday.  Over Easter weekend, we are going back to the midwest to visit my family.  This will be Alexander's first plane trip.