A Day in the Life: Part Two

So, after a night of waking up basically every hour on the hour with an enormously grumpy Too, I have made the executive decision to leave this God-forsaken hotel for our Lexington home. Granted, I am leaving my husband behind for a house with an empty refrigerator (yes, I really just compared leaving Tim to an empty fridge), but I cannot spend one more night here. Yeah. It's gotten that bad. I take peace in knowing that the guests of floor two will sleep peacefully tonight for possibly the first time all week and may actually be able to enjoy their complimentary continental breakfast sans Lils and her habitual touching of everything. (You're welcome.) Going home promises a whole different set of pleasantries, but I'll share those at a later date. 

One other side note before I get into the goods: I went to Crossfit last night and barely made it out alive. The only thing that kept me alive was the thought of breaking your dear hearts if I did die. You'd miss me, and you know it. That being said, I am currently in more pain than I really care to dialogue about, and that's that.

When we left off yesterday, I was recuperating from the mind-numbing disaster that is PBS Kids television. Happily for me, it is currently blaring in the background. 
Again. What joy is mine. 

Around noon we tackle what could potentially be one of three rides in the car for the day. This is Too's most favorite part of the day. False. If it were possible for a baby to hate something with the fire of a thousand suns, riding in the car would be it for her. The process goes something like this. 1. I place Too in car seat. (Enter time elapse of about 3.2 seconds.) 2. Too screams. For the ENTIRE TRIP. And it's not as if I'm dragging her around for hours and hours a day. The trip to the hospital is literally five minutes. Less if we catch the one stop light that stands between us and a 55 mph stretch of road. After wrestling Too's cumbersome car seat into the car, I usually spend the next five minutes trying to corral Lils into the car. This is never an easy task, as she is typically dodging traffic or launching her herself off the top of an air conditioning unit or something equally socially unacceptable. 

After a thoroughly delightful five-minute ride to the tune of the combined musical stylings of Too's significant lung capacity and Jason Aldean, we make it to the hospital for another nutritious and delicious lunch of canned green beans and roasted pork loin. (Tim promises that the food will get better once he's cleared out the freezer. I'm clinging to this possibility.) 

Lunch is always super enjoyable. Lils eats nothing, except the occasional pat of butter (yes, butter), and spends most of her time emptying the napkin holders and leaving trails of salt and pepper packets all over the cafeteria. Too, who most likely ate prior to our leaving in the hopes that I might actually be able to enjoy eating my lunch without my eternal cling-on, has suddenly become ravenous and must. eat. immediately. or die. So, being the multi-talented individual that I am, I hold her in my left arm, prop her bottle against my chin, and finish the portion of my lunch that in no way requires the use of more than one utensil at a time. 

After cleaning up the miscellaneous salt packets, napkins, and half-eaten butter pats, I say good-bye to Tim, who has conveniently made it through his entire lunch without any distractions, and mentally prepare myself for the seemingly endless five-minute ride home. 

Upon returning to the hotel, I tell Lils that it is time for a nap. And then I tell her again. And again. It's not really nap time until I've told her about a dozen times. And even then, it rarely means that she will fall asleep any time soon. Of course Too, who fell asleep within the time it took to exit the car, ride the elevator to the second floor, and get in to our room, has now suddenly risen, and the 45 minutes of peace I was hoping to have are now nothing more than a big fat joke. Excellent.

Lils does eventually fall asleep. Thank Jesus. When she wakes, we usually make a trip to the wee play area located in the parking lot of the Mexican restaurant outside our room window. I get the occasional awkward stare depending on how careful I was in getting dressed that morning. Whoops. After a solid five minutes, Lils is bored out of her mind and we return to the room, which by this point in the day, I swear is shrinking. 

By five it's time for another rousing edition of "Welcome to the Fifth Circle of Hell: The Family Car," and "Catch the Three-Year-Old Before She Seriously Maims Herself." Dinner is typically as eventful as lunch, and by this point, I am basically counting the seconds until bedtime. 

When Tim gets back to the hotel, the kids get their second wind. For Lils, this means that it's time to jump on/off every piece of furniture in the room. From bed to bed. From chair to bed to floor to bed. From cushion on the floor to bed to chair. And despite our incessant admonishments, she usually ends up bleeding. Naturally, Too is most likely losing her mind, because it just wouldn't be family time if one child wasn't bleeding from the mouth and the other screaming like a maniac. I mean really. Where's the fun in that?

Bed time is not really bed time at all. Too plays her aforementioned favorite game, "I Was Just Joking," and Lils spends a good hour telling us all about her dolls and how sissy needs to go to sleep and can we please turn off the light because she's trying to go to sleep. Once she does actually drift off, she spends the remainder of what has turned out to be a super fantastic night grinding her ever-loving teeth. All. Night. Long. And Tim, of course, has been asleep for the last two hours. Thanks for the back-up, my love... At least he means well. 

Thus ends another glorious day at the Hampton. I am so happy to be leaving and literally can not wait until our life is back to some sort of regularity. Peace out, y'all.

J.

Doing what she refused to do last night...