Yesterday, I started blogging my way through the shit show that was my solo-parenting trip to Oregon with two toddlers.

As you may recall, the kids fell asleep late on Friday night, and my only solace was that they would be sure to sleep in on Saturday morning.

The saga continues.

Day 2: Saturday, May 12

I had just fallen asleep.  Like, just fallen asleep.  But before I knew it, Ell-Bell was crying in bed next to me.  Cranky, fussy crying.  I grumbled and rolled over to look at the clock.  Somehow, 6 hours had actually passed, and it was already 3:30 in the morning.

I grumpily nursed Ell-Bell, sure that she would fall back asleep after a little soothing.  In my wildest dreams, I had contemplated that she might wake up at 3:30 in the morning, because her body was, after all, accustomed to waking up at 6:30 eastern time.  But when she didn’t go to sleep until 9:30 pacific time the night before, I threw that possibility out the window.

After nursing, I laid Ell-Bell back down beside me and snuggled her, waiting patiently for her to fall back asleep.  Instead, she twisted, turned, cried, scratched my eye balls, giggled, and stood up.  Sometimes, she would lie back down and be still, just long enough for me to start hoping that she was falling back asleep.  It was always a fake out.

Finally, at 5 a.m., I gave up and pulled out the tablet.  I figured I’d turn on Moana for Ell-Bell and catch a few more zzzs as she watched next to me, thinking K-Man clearly had hours more sleep left in him.  But K-Man apparently has Moana spidey-senses, even in his sleep, so as soon as he heard that opening song, he started to stir.

Great start to the day! After browsing my phone internet for a bit to see if there were any other hotels I could book that had a better room arrangement with working wi-fi (there weren’t), I took the kids down to breakfast.

Eventually, my mom and sister started to stir, so we all made plans to meet at the local Saturday Morning Market after a little bit.  Because Ell-Bell was losing it again at this point, I took the kids for a drive/car nap.  Ah, some peace and quiet.  How was it only 9:00 a.m. at this point?

The Saturday Morning Market was meh.  My mom and her husband brought their 20-month-old dog (apparently we’re aging dogs in months now), and she is kind of a total hyper nightmare.  The minute we got there, she scratched the shit out of my sister’s leg, and my sister was understandably unpleasant about that.  Cue the awkward.

We walked around, me carrying Ell-Bell in her carrier and pushing K-Man in the umbrella stroller.  Little dude was in a mood, I think probably because he wasn’t that excited to have some random new dog all up in his face.  He wouldn’t look at me or answer questions.  His sweet little cousin offered him a peanut butter cracker and he just kind of leaned away in disgust.

Finally, we all sat down to eat in the food court area, and this is when K-Man decided that he was, in fact, wide the fuck awake and ready to party.  After refusing to eat any of the $10 quesadilla I bought him, he started sprinting through the crowd, pushing the umbrella stroller in front of him, running over toes and slamming into ankles.  After I finally wrangled the umbrella stroller away, he took off running down the street.  Like, he probably ran about 100 yards before I finally caught up to him.  And then he proceeded to be a slippery little fellow as I chased him/carried him back to the table where the rest of my family was casually chatting and having an all-around good time.  They could see on my face that I was done, so we all packed up to leave.  We made plans to meet up again at a playground after some resting.

Resting, of course, is not what happened back at the hotel room.  Why would Ell-Bell ever agree to nap in her bed with K-Man and I sitting there in the same room? So we hung out for a bit, and then headed to the playground.

After I got to the playground and met up with my sister and her fam, my mom texted that she was not coming because she was still resting.  Well, to be honest, that pissed me off.  She’s not a geriatric, she’s 55-years-old! And I spent $1500 and all of my mental and physical energy to fly my ass across the damned country with two little kids to come see her, and she didn’t even want to spend time with them?  What even was the point of it all?

I buried my resentment and enjoyed the playground, and then we all headed over to my mom’s for a nice dinner in.  Her husband was doing the cooking, which was really nice.  But he also said it would be ready at 5:15 so I could get the kids home nice and early that night.  And it wasn’t actually ready until 6:45.

While we waited, I split my time between shielding K-Man from that damned dog all up in his face, and soothing Ell-Bell who just would NOT. STOP. CRYING.  Dang girl, get your life together!

The crying just escalated and escalated.  We offered her food, water, milk.  I tried to put her down for a nap in my mom’s bed.  Nothing worked.  She was sweaty and miserable.  Wait, sweaty? What? Why was she sweating? I really hoped she wasn’t getting sick.

Finally, dinner was served.  Ell-Bell was set up in a high chair (crying), and then my mom put some food down in front of her (bawling).  I was seconds away from calling it quits and leaving before eating my dinner.  In a last attempt, I pulled Ell-Bell out of her high chair and started bouncing her in my arms in the kitchen.

And then she burped.

“Uh oh.”

Burp. Burp. Annnnd vomit all over my shirt.

“Help! I need an adult!” I shouted, and my brother in-law ran in with some paper towels. I patted myself down, and did the same to Ell-Bell, but the damage was done.  Everyone was doomed to enjoy the rest of their dinner with the not-so-faint odor of barf wafting through the air.  Sorry guys!

When the wretched dinner was over, I ferried my kids back to the hotel.

We parked, I got K-Man out.  I went around the car and started pulling Ell-Bell out of her car seat.  And there she went again, vomiting all over me, herself, the borrowed car, the borrowed car seat, and the parking lot.  How did so much vomit fit in such a tiny little human?

So with the vomit baby on my hip, my other kid standing off to the side, I stood there for five minutes using baby wipes to clean vomit out of the car and car seat.

We headed in to the hotel and I avoided all eye contact as I marched my vomit troupe up to the room.

Thankfully, both kids went right to sleep after a nice, hot, thorough bath.

Stay tuned tomorrow for Part Three.  It was Mother’s Day, so I had that going for me.

Until next time,

Vee