Even during their best moments, traveling with two small kids was every bit as EXHAUSTING as I had predicted: cleaning sippy cups and bottles in hotel bathrooms; getting them to sleep at night; calming them when they woke up disoriented; waking up on TX time to give them their morning milk; dressing them; bathing them; brushing teeth; applying sunblock; taking G to the potty; changing Nico's diapers; scavenging for something besides bread and yogurt that they would eat; cleaing up after their messes; keeping them hydrated and fed even when we were waiting until later to eat; keeping them busy and entertained with the few things we brought; keeping them quiet so as not bother other guests at hotels and restaurants. I haven't been that tired at the end of a day in a long time... I mean drag-ass, dog-tired!
Actually viewing the Canyon looked a little like this:
Fortunately I was the official photographer, so the hubby had Nico in the back pack or toddling to move his little legs and we both chased after G a little.
What about grandpa you might ask...
Well, he paid for the entire trip, so bless his heart (or whatever)... but he was totally ON VACATION!! (i.e. not all that helpful with the kids.) He had his own room so he slept like an angel--no interruptions. He was also on his own time schedule (that wasn't always convenient for the rest of us).
The first day we were there I got up at 6:30 to shower, exhausted from the previous day's journey from TX to Northern AZ (pretty much all day on an airplane, processing the rental car and then driving 4 hours to the Canyon). He calls at 7:00 and says that he had woken up at 5:30, and had (a relaxing) breakfast. He was getting ready to get in the shower. He suggested we go have breakfast and he would wait for us in his room.
Naturally, he has no idea how loooooong it is going to take to get two adults and two kids ready for the day, to go down to eat (a NOT relaxing) breakfast, get the kids' stuff (drinks, snacks, diapers, lotions, potions, toys, jackets etc.) ready for the day etc. When he called (waaaaaay) later-- we had just eaten breakfast but hubby still had to shower. So he says, I am going to start walking to the park entrance, pick me up on the way.
Of course, that evening he hinted that he'd like to get an earlier start in the morning. So, I got up at the crack of freaking dawn to get as much ready as possible. We had a quick breakfast at the big yellow M and got back to the hotel only to find that Tata had gotten a late start after sleeping in and was not ready. We had to entertain the kids for an hour before we ended up leaving... at the same time as the day before.
He was one or two steps ahead of us most of the trip and we were scurrying to keep up... Ah the joys of traveling on someone else's dime.
2 comments:
Well, at least most of it was good. This part sounded pretty irritating though. It's rough with two little ones for sure.
When my daughter was 1 1/2 we went to England/Austria to visit my husbands relatives. It was great in so many ways, but I almost had a nervous breakdown just trying to accommodate all the inlaws schedules, while trying to maintain SOME sort of nap/feed schedule for Sweetpea.
So I sympathize completely.
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