First Day in DR

After a very long day of travel Jonah and I made it safely to The Dominican Republic last night.  The first leg of the trip was pretty bad in terms of Jonah being antsy and not satisfied by my attempts to entertain him.  I even had an episode of Sesame Street loaded on my iPod, but he just wanted to keep taking the headphones out of his ears and put them in his mouth for which he got spanked... He had meltdowns because I wouldn't let him play with my lotion or lipstick.  By the end I wanted to take him to the back of the plane and shut him in a bathroom.  At least when we landed he jumped up and down on my lap and shouted, 'Yay! We did it!'  It was very cute.

We made a quick connection in Miami with just enough time to go to the bathroom/ change a diaper, but not enough time to get anything to eat.  I had some snacks in my bag so we survived.  Jonah did better on the second leg - maybe he was a little more subdued because he was tired.  There was a very sweet lady next to us who held him in her lap for a while and read to him and played with him.  That really helped.

We made it through customs quickly and found our suitcases at the baggage claim... We had checked our carry-on bag at the gate in DC because it was a full flight and they were asking people to check things.  That bag did not make it to our destination.  It is still missing.  It contained my makeup, miscellaneous toys and things for Jonah and.... our laptop.  I am sad because it had Jonah's entire life in pictures and I'm worried because it had our tax returns on it, which means all of our personal information.  So, please pray that it will be returned to us, or at the very least that whoever finds it doesn't decide to use our personal information.

We're staying at a very nice hotel near the airport, but the surrounding area isn't quite as nice.  When we looked out our window this morning we could see down to the swimming pool, but on the other side of the pool walls is a field with all sorts of random trash, a train box car, and grazing cows.  I lifted Jonah up to look out and he said, 'Cows swimming!'  We had a nice breakfast in the hotel and then Jonah and I went swimming.  We had a wonderful time!  The floatie suit worked, but he would tip over if I wasn't holding him.  Then we tried the floatie suit in combination with the arm floaties - perfect!  He looked hilarious, but he could float and swim around all by himself (of course I was always right by him, you nervous Nellies!).  He was so happy - he kept saying, 'Yay, floaties!'  Then we dried off, had lunch, took a nice long nap, and then ventured out in a taxi to the grocery store.  The traffic was totally crazy - I'm glad I wasn't trying to do it myself in a rental car.  We got some snacks and drinks and baby wipes - another thing that was lost in the missing carry-on.  By the time we got back it was time for dinner and Jon was back from the airport so we ate together at the hotel restaurant and put Jonah to bed.

I wish I had pictures to share, but the hotel computer doesn't have a slot for our memory card so until we get the laptop back we probably won't be able to post pictures.  But stay tuned for more updates in the days to come!