Christmas in July

Ah, family vacations. What’s not to love? You spend 3 days doing laundry, packing everybody up, and making lists upon lists. (Swim diapers? Check! Inhaler? Check! Extra wipes and plastic placemats? Check, check!) Then you pile in the car, set off, and immediately discover you forgot several crucial items.

Like, say, the car charger for the portable DVD player and the lullaby CDs -– items which are your only CHANCE for surviving a 7+ hour drive with 2 small children.

We set off last night after dinner, naively hoping that the kids would fall asleep in the car. Around 10 p.m., the baby finally nodded off – almost 3 HOURS past his normal bedtime! And that was only because we finally rustled up a “Baby’s First Noel” CD from the depths of the glove box. “Away in a manger…”

The 4 y.o. fought off sleep thanks to his new handheld video game that he’s already obsessed with after only 3 days. Goodbye, active childhood; hello ADD and childhood obesity! Anyway, it kept him busy.

Good thing, because we got lost somewhere in New Jersey trying to find our hotel and ended up going 10 miles out of our way on a road that did not allow any U-turns or left turns, and probably would have ended up in Canada if it weren’t for a kind police officer who led us to a “jug handle,” which is apparently New Jersey for “the only friggin’ way to turn around on our endless one-way roads.” “Silent night, holy night…”

We finally found the hotel, which was a fairly swanky boutique hotel that C. found on Priceline. We carry in our groggy, pajama-clad offspring, who promptly become fully alert and begin to sprint around the room. We finally wrestle them into bed, deciding that 1 kid and 1 parent per bed is the best arrangement. “It came upon a midnight clear…”

C. had the pleasure of sharing a bed with Riley, whose nocturnal acrobatics led to a less-than-restful night’s sleep. While I, in the other bed, was kicked repeatedly in the ribs by Kung-Fu Miles. At 6 a.m., bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, the baby woke us all with his clarion voice. Then we discovered we’d carried both kids in barefoot from the car. So our shoeless hooligans ran screeching through the halls on our way out. Hmm, wonder why the concierge didn’t say they look forward to our next stay?

We were back on the road by 8:30 a.m., sure that the kids would pass out from exhaustion and donuts. By 11 a.m., we had resorted to “These 3 Kings.”

When we FINALLY arrived at my in-laws’, the baby was rested enough to get right to work proving just how un-babyproof their house is. He dismantled a baby gate, got hold of a loose screw, found a pin buried in the carpet, knocked over some china figurines, and chewed on a plug in under 5 minutes.

Now it’s naptime -– I mean, what SHOULD be naptime. But instead, Riley has been screaming in the Pack ‘n’ Play upstairs in a too-bright bedroom for 40 min. Time to bring out the big guns. That’s right: “Have yourselves a Merry little Christmas now…”