Tonight we wanted to go get Philly cheesesteak sandwiches -- one of the many delights of visiting my parents. The restaurant is kind of far away, moreso now that they have moved to a different town (New Hope). We thought we had it all planned out: leave early, before 5:00, to allow for travel time and then we could get home in plenty of time to feed the babies and get them ready for bed. They seemed a tiny bit tired when we were about to leave, so I thought they would probably fall asleep in the car and all would be well. The best-laid plans... Sadly, instead of being lulled by the motion of the car and drifting off to sleep as we hoped, they just got more and more agitated. Simultaneously, Jessie and I (sitting in the back to be near the babies) got hot and kind of carsick from the very windy and hilly roads we are so unused to now.
We offered them Cheerios, which placated them for a time. We offered them binkies, which they handily rejected. Eventually, we even parked and took them out of their carseats to nurse. Bella complied, Eva didn't. We had to put them back in their carseats for the drive home and they proceeded to scream their heads off.
One of them would start to settle down a bit and then the other would really get going and set the first one off all over again. No amount of singing, shhhhhing, tickling or anything else seemed to help at all. Finally Bella went to sleep, but Eva screamed all the way to the driveway (at least 1/2 hour). How Bella was able to sleep through that is beyond me.
Needless to say, we couldn't eat our scrumptious sandwiches. By the time we got home, every part of my body felt sore from the tension of it all. We fed them and got them to bed as fast as humanly possible, since we didn't even want to look at them anymore today. Please please please don't let that happen on the plane ride home. It was a textbook example of me not wanting to be the mother anymore. Smotherhood to the max.
p.s. After they were in bed, Mom reheated the sandwiches in the oven and we sat down to enjoy them. They are sooooooo good, but I wouldn't want to go through that experience again!
9 comments:
I'm tense for you after reading that, how awful. I don't know if I could recover so quickly after a sterophonic crying jag like that. I hope the sandwich was enough to soothe your fried nerves.
I hope they slept through the night after all that! At least you compensate for the hard things with good things like your mom's store! It looks like an awesome place!
I am tense, too. Sometimes, after stories like this, I am content. :)
That's my worst nightmare. When Kaitlin was young she screamed like that just about every time we got in the car. This was before we stopped going on so many road trips--so you can imagine how terrible it was. She would sleep for an hour, wake up, scream for 20 minutes and fall asleep for another hour. It was the cycle.
So I feel for you. Did she at least sleep well through the night for you? And, there's nothing like having tow babies who feed off of each other's frustration. It just seems to escalate, and get worse and worse. I'm so sorry. At least you did get to enjoy your sandwiches without the babies. Could you just feel the tension draining away from your back while you were eating?
Strangely enough, Jessie and I both still felt tense, even when we finally went to bed around 11:30. I felt like I had a pit in my stomach. Bella slept through the night (as usual). Eva did not
(as usual).
I'm so sorry! That sounds completly awful. Good luck on the trip home.
I completely sympathize with you, Michelle. When I visited your parents two years ago, we too made a trip out for cheese steaks, which included my suffering from carsickness, and our pulling off the road so that Mom could throw up. Good times.
I just have to say that the reason I threw up was because I was recovering from the flu! I still love those sandwiches, though.
All I have to say is, where's Grandma with her Vitamin V when you need her?
Michelle- I am thinking that the babies were getting it all out so they can be angels on the plane ride home! At least that's what I am hoping for you! I totally sympathize with the situation!
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