Thursday, July 26, 2007

On vacation

We are on vacation. With children!

What were we thinking?

J and I decided it was time for a short get away. We live on the coast, but by this time of year the heat, the tourists, and the incessant hurricane talk (Are YOU prepared for another Hugo? Do YOU have enough insurance? Have YOU stocked your hurricane survival kit yet?*) get to us, and we feel the desire for a short escape. So what do we do? We head to the mountains for our turn playing tourists.

We left last night. I had a brilliant plan. Leave after dinner and baths so that the girls would sleep the five hours. It was a great idea in theory, but it didn't work out quite so well in reality.

First, I never should have told Little E where we were going. Especially not the part about seeing Thomas the Train. Looking back, that was a bad idea. Very bad. You see, children two and three quarters years old do not have a well-developed sense of time. So by saying, "We'll ride on Thomas on Friday," I may as well have told her "All aboard!" This meant that she didn't dare close her eyes on the trip up (until the last 20 minutes). If she had been happy to be strapped to her carseat that would have been one thing, but after the first two hours, she was pissed about the whole thing, once telling J, "J, turn this car around NOW. I want to go home." Yes, she called him by his first name. That went over well.

Second, if one child is up throwing wild tantrums, the other child is hard pressed to sleep well. This means that Baby M was awake and not happy for the last two hours of the trip. We had stereo wailing in the back seat.

Finally, the girls were wired after we finally checked into our hotel. So wired that they were both up until 1:30 a.m. No amount of nursing, walking or singing was going to help Baby M go to sleep. Little E stayed up in solidarity.

This morning we went shopping for a fan to produce white noise (I can't sleep without it-how we left mine, I don't know) and a sit and stand stroller.** Why we have waited until 11 months for a sit and stand, I don't know, but Little M can't walk as far here so a double stroller was definitely in order. Coming from the Lowcountry, she is unaccustomed to hills and we have lots of walking planned. After their nap, we are going up into the mountains to see the house my in-laws are building. I have mixed feelings about their vacation home (a place in the mountains-cool! more time with the in-laws- Ugh!).

Tomorrow is Thomas Day. I'll post pics.



*Our answers are no, no and no.
**And a big bottle of wine. For the whining.

3 comments:

AmyinMotown said...

THIS, my friend, is why we never go anywhere. Because when we do go places Maggie does not sleep.

She does the same thing E does about time. I made the mistake of telling her we were going to her Papa's birthday party this wekend and now every day when she wakes up from her nap she thinks it's time for Papa's party. My husband told her yesrerday, unbeknownst to me, "We should go to the zoo soon." So when we got in the car to go grcoery shopping? She was sure we were going to the zoo (unfortunately we pass the zoo on the way to grocery shop!). When I got her from her nap? "We go to zoo tonight."

She also gets a big kick out of using our first names, although she doesn't use mine a lot. I'll call upstairs to my husband and she'll stand right next to me going "Pauuulll! Paulll! Dadddyyy!" I can't believe E told you to "turn this car around right now." Did you laugh, or was nothing much funny by that point?

Anonymous said...

LOL, Em! I made the same mistake with Henry about Thomas! We are going to see him in August and I bought the tickets on-line. I thought he would get a kick out of seeing the tickets and we could cheerfully count down the days until we got to see Thomas. Ummm, no. The minute he heard me say we were going to see Thomas he freaked out and wanted to GO NOW! NOW MOMMY....PLEEAAASSSE! Tantrums then ensued shortly after I told him we had to wait 25 days. I am no longer talking about going to see Thomas, and I may just load him in the car the day we are going and tell him we are going to the store so I don't have to listen to him whining about seeing Thomas every 5 minutes of our 1 hour journey.

You are a very brave woman going on vacation with 2! We went to Myrtle Beach last fall when Henry had just turned 2 and we all about died. Not fun.

Where in the mountains are you going? I know Thomas was going to be at Tweetsie Railroad in Boone, NC this summer, and we had thought about going out there to see him (DH is from NC, so his family is there). We used to live in Greenville, SC and DH and I both went to school in Boone, NC. It is so beautiful up there! Enjoy the cooler weather!

Jenny B

Nico said...

Sorry your trip was a bit of a nightmare, hopefully the enjoyment of being there made up for it.

And I will take the tip of not telling where we're going to heart, when A gets to be that age!