First Night Aboard

Our first night sleeping on the boat was a success!  After a semi-stressful day of lugging all our our belongings onto Asante and trying to create some semblance of it all, we were finally able to tidy up enough to feel like we were home and enjoy a nice dinner al fresco in our cockpit with Uncle Al.  We still have a lot of work ahead of us and we've got some adjusting to do in this new space, but it feels pretty good to be right here, right now.

If there was any concern whether or not Isla liked the boat, it was crushed instantly.  She was so excited in her new v-berth that she was almost manic.  She'd excitedly sprint-crawl from side to side - I'm talking Olympic crawling here - and pull herself up on the shelves to jump and pant with joy with a huge grin on her little face.  Her excitement was so severe that I honestly became concerned that she ate something weird and was having some sort of reaction.  That is how exuberant she was. But no, she didn't eat anything funny at all, she was just really, really happy.  It was awesome.

Being the sleep freak that I am, I was concerned that this obvious "high" she was enjoying combined with new surroundings would kill her pretty great sleep schedule.  Lucky for all of us, the worry was for naught.  Before we left Chicago we bought a tiny travel pack-n-play contraption off Craigslist and it's going down as one of the wisest purchases we've made.  Despite the fact that this child has slept in about fifteen different places in the last five months, she (almost) always goes to sleep for naps and bedtime without a hitch.  I attribute this to a) sleep training and b) the fact that her little bed remains the same.  No matter where we plop her down, she's in familiar territory: she sleeps on the same blanket, listens to the same little musical sea horse and as soon as I lay her down she knows what to do and does it.  Most of the time.  She is still a baby, after all.

Anyway, we are here, in our new boat! It is so exhilarating and exciting!  Scott leaves next week for Grenada which means Isla and I have a couple weeks to get acquainted with life aboard until we head up to Chicago for a visit.  The learning curve will be steep.  We'll quickly realize areas that need improvement, we'll slowly and surely figure out the best/most convenient places for things, we'll make lists and notes of projects to do "in the future" that will make life a little easier: a shelf here, a light there, new latch for this, better configuration for that...we'll get there, it's a never ending process when you live on a boat.  This is the beginning of many new "firsts" for us as a family.  In the meantime, it feels good to be home.