A Visit to Colorado: Jumping, Eating, (not) Sleeping

I had a few more pictures from our trip to Colorado that I'd like to share with you.

On Friday, Dale, Adelaida, and I were walking through a shopping area and saw something that caught our eyes: a store front with the name "Jumpin" and what appeared to be several giant blow-up bouncy castles inside. We were intrigued and walked in, and sure enough it was a store filled with giant blow-up bouncy castles! It was relatively empty (three or four other kids there), and their pricing scheme was so tempting (parents get in free; kids under 2 only $4) that we paid our $4, removed our shoes, and evaluated the different bouncy castles to see which one we wanted to try first.

There were traditional bouncy castles...


...and giant slides...


...and obstacle-course-style bouncy castles (complete with two kids who wanted so badly for Dale to play with them!)...


...and even a toddler play area with a small plastic playset and teeter-totter.


We had fun, Adelaida had fun, and it was well worth the $4 admission fee!

Another very notable part of this trip was Adelaida eating. We taught her the sign language for "eat" so that she can tell us when she's hungry. She's been using it for about two months, but while we were in Colorado she suddenly started using the sign all the time! We thought at first that she might just be testing the sign out -- using it frequently to confirm that there is a cause-and-effect relationship between her signing "eat" and us giving her food.

That theory was blown away when we saw how much she was eating each time she signed. She was really hungry! Our typical day would be: Adelaida wakes up and wants to eat, we feed her for about an hour, she plays for half an hour, Adelaida says she wants to eat, we feed her for an hour, she plays for half an hour, says she wants to eat, we feed her for an hour, and the whole process repeats. I really think she spent more time eating than she spent awake and not eating!

The fact that she was eating so much during the day made the night-times a little more understandable. Adelaida has always had a tendency to sleep poorly at night when we are traveling: she wakes up frequently, and since we are generally staying with friends or family, we are more likely to get her out of bed and nurse her rather than let her get back to sleep herself. This trip was no exception, and the first night we were on the road I nursed her three times in the middle of the night. The weird thing was that she was ravenously hungry all three times! Even after eating so much during the day, she still wanted to nurse for nutrition rather than just for comfort! The nights got progressively worse until the last night, when Adelaida woke up to nurse six times in the nine hours she slept. Dale and I were exhausted! The frequent night nursings continued after we came home, and we put up with them as long as Adelaida's day-time appetite was so large; for about a week now she's been back to a more normal appetite, so we've been weaning her back to one nursing at night, and last night she slept the entire night without nursing (she did wake up one time, but went back to sleep by herself). I'm really looking forward to regular uninterrupted sleep again!