Pure Joy

I've often said that Teddy lives in the moment, and he had some very joyful moments last week Thursday. We spent our first night in a hotel in at least 18 months. 

Some kids love hotels for swimming pools, like AJ. Others love the endless selection of shows on TV, like my enjoyment of the Food Network. (OK, most people now have access to so much media that this isn't exciting, but we have never had cable.) Teddy, well, he simply enjoys being someplace different that's not entirely Teddy-proofed.

From the moment he rode into the hotel on his chariot (the luggage rack), he was grinning ear to ear behind his mask. He couldn't contain his joy when we got into the room and immediately ran around exploring everything. He bounced on the bed. He laid on the bed and did his happy feet. He sat on the couch for a millisecond. He discovered there were holes in the wall and insisted that each of us try out each hole to see what we could see. He discovered the bathroom. He discovered the phone. He found the TV remote. 

Teddy loved the windows in the wall. 

He spent at least an hour bouncing around the room. We attempted to settle him for bed around 9, but he chose instead to perch on the air conditioner like a cat staring out the curtain into the parking lot. (He might have dislodged the cover on the air conditioner. Apparently it's not designed for cats the size of Teddy.) 

Teddy was channeling his inner cat.

He finally settled down to sleep by 10:30 p.m. without tears or screaming from any of us. He simply was too excited to lay still. He also stayed asleep until right around 5:45 a.m. For many people, that's insanely early. For Teddy in a hotel room, that's what we'd call a great night's sleep. 

We were both anxious about a hotel stay for multiple reasons, COVID being one of them. The reality is, though, that our biggest concern in hotels is always how Teddy will sleep. We've spent nights trying to get him to sleep until after midnight. We also have routinely been awake before 5 a.m., often on nights that he didn't fall asleep until extremely late. We also had that one morning when he woke up for the day ... at 2:30 ... in the morning. When you spend all your energy fighting him to sleep only to wake up insanely early, it's grueling. 

So in some ways, this was a test of the Teddy travel system. If we had a horrible night's sleep, we would have spent from now until our next trip dreading it because of the sleep struggles. I know one good night's sleep is not a guarantee of peaceful dreams for every night when traveling, but it gives us hope that with his development and the multiple medications intended to help his body rest at night, that vacations might be slightly less stressful.

And that, my friends, is a reason for sweet dreams.