Well That Was Fun!

Our decision to begin our weekend trip to Michigan at 10pm was based largely on the idea that it would be the quickest and most peaceful way to go about the drive. We knew there would be no traffic to fight causing us to fight each other out of frustration, and, more importantly, our kids would all just sleep the whole trip away, be carried in at our destination without waking, and settle peacefully into their beds at the end.

Well, we were right about the traffic. That's all we were right about. While the big boys did eventually fall asleep out of exhaustion, Jack never did give in to the sleep monster. At about 11pm, I kept hearing "Boo!" A little while later, the game was whack mommy in the back of the head with your blankie. Next up, spitting contests. I'm going to need to scrub that window pretty thoroughly today and his jammies were soaked. When he tired of that, he began round one of yelling, which eventually gave way to repeating the same syllable over and over again: "bububububububu..." When that got old, he decided to start pestering his sleeping brother next to him by grapping an entire handful of hair and yanking him awake! We must have searched for his blankie 30 times.

Perhaps he was just too distracted by the swirling vortex of snow and wind we traveled through. I know I was pretty focused on it myself. There were times along the way that the highway was completely covered in snow and the snow really was hitting us from every direction, giving the impression that we were flying rather than driving. At times, the only thing we could was the dim tail lights of the big rig directly in front of us (also adding to the swirling mess of snow, but at least giving us something to follow rather than rely on the side bumpy strips on the road to tell us where the road was. That is just plain annoying!)

We did finally arrive at our destination in the middle of the night, but the problem of getting Jack to sleep continued on. His crib mattress must have been made of lava or something because just being lowered down into it, barely touching his toes on it set off a scream of torture. As we are staying in someone else's house, I gave up quickly on the torture baby bed idea and brought him into my bed, thus beginning a 2-hour, middle of the night wrestling match between us. He poked me in the eyes, he sat on my head. He crawled under the covers to the foot of the bed and got stuck. He body slammed dad. He head butted him awake. He discovered the head board makes a funny sound when you bash your head against it and repeated that delightful excercise over and over again.

When I woke up a few hours later, I hadn't realized that I had even fallen asleep. I felt like Ben when he claims he hadn't slept when he gets up in the morning.