Vacation Vignettes

We were on vacation last week. Not that you'd know it!

Here is a brief sampling of scenes from our first vacation as a three-member family:

• 2:00 pm, Monday, first official weekday of vacation, 3rd day off in a row for Mr. F. We are exhausted, Bug is fussing to beat the band (still) and is making his usual list of demands. Mr. F turns to me and says: "I don't know how you do this all day, every day, all week..." This is such music to my ears I grin and chuckle to myself for the rest of the day, despite the howling and fussing from our little teething guy.



• 3:00 pm, Tuesday? Second official weekday of vacation. We have long since missed the golden 90 minute morning window where it is possible to actually take Bug into a store to run errands, but decide to venture out anyway to the home improvement store for window shades. By the time we locate the shades Bug is crying to climb out of shopping cart and into Mommy's arms. Nothing will do. Mr. F pushes cart full of window shades while a cranky Bug clings to Mommy like a life preserver. He then proceeds to howl in the back seat all the way home and fusses all the way through dinner, bath and beddie-bye time until he mercifully falls asleep at 7 pm. We sit on the couch later too exhausted to look at each other.
  
  
• Sometime later that week? The teething continues, nothing makes him happy. We are all lying on the living room carpet in our pajamas going through a series of toys trying to find something to make Bug happy (not sure what time of day it was at this point, but most reasonable people would be showered and dressed by now).
  
  
• Thursday. Date Night. A family member has mercy on us and comes over at Bug's dinner time to feed, bathe and get him to bed so we can go out to dinner alone, to a real restaurant - the kind with cloth napkins. It feels like heaven. I feel strange but great. We have a wonderful time that is made even better by the news that Bug has gone down to sleep "like a little angel" at 7 pm and that we should stay out as late as we like. Woo-hoo! We kick up our heels and go to coffee bar. I know. We are such wild people it's staggering.
  
  
• Friday. Date Day. Another family member has had mercy on us and offers to watch Bug during the day so we can go do something else. I can hardly stand it - two days in a row I get to go out with my husband! Alone! We are stumped about what to do, and exhausted from being up with Bug sometime before 5 am, I think it was. Here we are being offered freedom but lack the energy to pull ourselves together and flee. But somehow we manage. We drop him off up the street and off we go. On the way back to pick him up we get a phone call on the cell. The plaintive voice of our relative can be faintly heard above the din of Bug's fussing: "How much Tylenol can he have? I don't think he's quite himself, maybe his teeth are really bugging him...?" Off the phone, we chortle to one another: "Oh, no baby, he IS being himself!" Mr. F steps on the gas and we hurry back to rescue our poor beleaguered family member. Just as we thought, he was just being himself - gassy, teethy, bored, tired and cranky.
  
  
• Tuesday, July 4th. Independence Day! We are exhausted and zoned. I'm holding Bug because he insists upon it in that uncharmingly persistent way of his. Mr. F is retrieving yet another fallen binky off the floor and rinsing it off as I mention some bit of information I've been meaning to relay to him. He waits patiently as I finish my statement then moves to put the binky in my mouth. Well, I said, at least you waited until I finished what I had to say.

It's all kind of fuzzy, but those are some of the moments that stuck out. Now I must be off; naptime is over, and thus ends my morning reprieve.