She Can Sleep in the Car ...

... she just doesn't want to. Saturday, we went up to Pennsylvania for J--- and M---'s second annual Easter egg dying party. When Evelin was culling her old Martha Stewart Livings earlier in the year, she pulled all the articles with fancy egg-dying tricks and sent them to M--- and we got to try a few during the party. The one that worked the best was to put the dye in a shallow bowl, add some olive oil and run a fork through it to break up the oil slick, then roll the egg through the mixture once or twice and pat dry. The oil keeps the dye from sticking to all of the egg, creating a marbleized look that was pretty cool. For the second year in a row, Evelin took home the prize for best-looking egg.

Celeste slept most of the drive up and was really good while we were there, even taking a short nap, but she was a bit grumpier on the trip home. Naturally, I didn't make things better, because when Evelin suggested we leave at about 4:00 p.m., I thought it was so that we'd have time to flip by Va La Vineyards on the way home; she was thinking so that we'd be home around 6:30 p.m., before any serious meltdown.

When we got to the vineyard the compromise was that I could run in and pick up some bottles, but no tasting. (I wasn't worried — we've bought some of their wines before and they have never disappointed — although I would have liked to have had a few sips ...) We didn't get home until around 7:15 p.m. and Celeste was a bit on the grumpy side ...

As for her sleep, she's doing pretty well, if she's in our bed. She'll still wake up several times a night, but seems to either soothe herself back to sleep or take the pacifier and quickly fall back asleep more often than not. After the New Jersey trip (and long sleep home), she seems to have realized that she doesn't need to eat in the middle of the night, giving Evelin a bit of a respite. She still doesn't want to see me during the first few hours after she falls asleep, however.

The rest of the weekend was pretty bland: Sunday, after an early morning trip to the landfill to drop off a lot of spent batteries at the household hazardous waste recycling center, I spent much of the day on work stuff and straightening up the wine cellar (there's a lot of wine in there that I bought with plans for holding a tasting that never came together and now they're all in the questionable/past prime/what was I thinking phase, so we're planning to open up a few things over the next week or two and dump if they're no good). We did get to the farmers market for some apples and a cup of chai, too, but nothing exciting for any of us.