We are back from California now, we arrived home just before midnight last night - two days early. The retreat was great but exhausting. Jude really only had one good night's sleep while we were there, most nights he was up for an hour or two, sometimes more. And being in the same room as him meant that we were all up together.
This lack of sleep didn't seem to impact him that badly. He still had energy during the day and he napped pretty well - it was just the nights that were the problem. Even so, it was great having him there. He received so much loving from everyone - everywhere we went people wanted to engage with him. He seemed to love the attention, flashing his cute toothless grin regularly. There were over 800 people at the retreat and Jude was the youngest of all of them.
Right outside the door to our room was a flight of stairs which Jude became very excited about. Marcy was playing with him in the corridor one day and turned around for a second or two and looked back and Jude had climbed up three stairs. So we realized he can climb stairs now. It was a fun activity which we did several times throughout the trip, and by the end of the trip he was negotiating the stairs with ease. Today, back home he made it up the stairs here for the first time.
Another change this week we noticed was Jude starting to imitate us more. It was actually pretty funny a couple of days ago when I was eating dinner and I looked over at Jude and he was pretending to chew just like me. Other times we would slap our hands on our legs and he would join in with us, too. And when people wave to him it looks like he is trying to wave back.
We did get some free time to do a bit of recreation. We visited a state park right on the water just south of Carmel where we took this photo (taken with my wonderful new iPhone). The weather was spectacular every day we were there. Around 68-72 degrees and bright sunshine. We were sad to leave but we are very relieved to be home. We can finally get caught up on the sleep we have been missing out on the past 8 days.
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