Thanksgiving "Vacation"

You would think that vacation = relaxing. Yeah – not so much with 2 kids. I don’t mean to make it sound like we didn’t have a good week, because we did. It was just a bit more challenging from a logistics perspective and included much less sleep than Thanksgiving pre-kids. It started with a visit from my college girlfriends and their babies on Saturday night. It has kind of become a tradition for us all to get together when I get into Houston. It is great being able to see them and their kids, but I will say, I think that we collectively each said about 5 words to each other all night. Most of the night was spent with Amy walking Olivia around (as she is at that, "I'm learning to walk and want to walk everywhere" stage), Jessica following Owen around (as he is at that, "I'm 18 months and this is a new house, so I want to explore" stage) and me getting Alex down and then avoiding to get Avery down thinking it would be a long process in a new place, which led to her hanging out all night and talking and interrupting our conversation (because she is in that, "I know how to talk and I want people to pay attention to me and only me" phase). I will say that there was about 10 mins while we ate when all kids were occupied, which led to us actually being able to eat and drink some wine sans kids. This moment is captured below.But, overall, it was really nice being able to catch up a bit and to see everyone's kids. Hopefully, in the future, we can try to plan an adult only party after the kids go down. The next morning, Lexi, the kids and I left for Aransas Pass to go to Mom and Dad's. Note, Josh and Will weren't included in this car load. Even with Lexi’s SUV, which has 3 rows, we still couldn’t fit the kids and the luggage in one car, so we were forced to rent an economy going one way from Houston to Aransas Pass. This car literally only carried the luggage and Josh (Will had to work and came down later). Everything was great for the 1st 2 hours. However, just as we started on hour #3 in the car, Alex decided that he needed to eat and he needed to eat right then and there. So, we pulled over at some sort of gas station, which turned out to be the one where a van full of dead people from Mexico were found trying to be smuggled across the border a few years ago (we should have known at that point that this would not turn out well). So, we stop and proceed to wake Avery up by stopping (seen sleeping here with her headphones on). At which point, she decides to let us know just how unhappy she is that she was woken up by screaming loudly – very loudly. So, to appease her, Lexi offers to get her out of the car to walk around. They were out there for no more than 5 mins when Lexi starts screaming, “Fire ants! Fire Ants! Get back in the car!” Poor Lexi ended up getting some bites, but thankfully, Avery escaped and went back into her seat surprisingly easily. So, I’m done feeding Alex on one side and try to change his diaper in my lap. I couldn’t figure out why it wasn’t working, and then realized (as he was screaming in my lap because his head was inadvertently being pushed against the center console) that I was trying to put a size FIVE diaper on him (which I had with me in order to avoid an accidental potty break by Avery as she was sleeping in Aunt Lexi’s brand new car seat). So, once I get that figured out, I finish feeding him and then Miss Annabel decides that she now needs to eat. So, we feed her. Finally, we’re off. Everything was ok for the next 30 mins. But, then both babies and Avery all decided that it was time to get out of the car, so they literally all screamed and cried for the last 30 mins of the ride. At this point, all we could do was laugh.

Once we got there, everything was fine. Sleeping arrangements were a bit tough for no other reason than Alex not wanting to sleep AT ALL. Why you ask? Because he didn’t poop for TEN days!!! I mean, seriously????? What child just doesn’t poop for TEN days? So, as you can imagine, he was rather uncomfortable and as a result, was pretty fussy during the day and VERY uncomfortable at night. In order to avoid waking Avery up, I slept in a different room so that I could hear Alex (who was in my father’s office surrounded by multiple African animals…come to think of it, maybe the fact that a baboon was staring at him all night and probably scaring the crap out of him had something to do with him not sleeping??) and get him before he woke Avery up. Avery slept in a big girl bed (aka, a blow up mattress on the floor next to our bed) for the first time. Everything was fine and she was very excited to not be surrounded by wooden bars. However, the first night, Josh said he woke up to Avery screaming. Turns out, her upper body had fallen off of the mattress and ended up UNDER the bed. Can you imagine waking up to a bed on top of you??? Josh had to literally lift up the bed to get her out. Poor thing. Good thing she had no recollection of this the next day.

Other than the sleeping issues, things were good. We took Avery to the aquarium, which she loved.
She had her first real Thanksgiving dinner (she was in bed by the time we ate last year) and seemed to really enjoy it. She was introduced to gravy and proceeded to dip everything, including her grapes, into it. She also got to do one of her favorite things - help Grandma bake. Alex spent most of his time with his cousin Annabel laying on the ground, sitting in the bouncy seats and chewing on his favorite toy, Sohpie (or, Sophinator, as I like to call him to make it a bit more manly).
The flight back was relatively good. There was one minor issue at the beginning when we got to the airport at 6:45 am only to be told that our flight at 8 am had been cancelled now for months and that it now leaves at 6:50 AM. Clearly, we missed the memo on that one. It was fine – they re-routed us through Atlanta and we only got home an hour and a half later than we would have. There was one time when both of them decided to have a melt down at the same time on the plane. Again, all we could do was laugh at that point.
All in all, it was a nice holiday, but I’ll be honest – I’m looking forward to next year when Alex is a bit older and a bit less constipated (hopefully!).