Vacation Adventures

We had a few "adventures" during our trip to Montreat this year. Everyone did awesome during the 10 or 11 hour drive there. Tripp had some difficulty adjusting to his new sleeping situation however. He did not nap the first day and each night seemed to have a new challenge of its own. The first night was just the fact that realized he could turn the lights on and off. Not a big deal. Dealt with that. The second night was that he decided he would sleep in the other twin bed in the room and freak me out when I could not find him when I went in to check on him (he was still awake and I made him move back to the other bed). Later that night, I found him in his bed curled up with his stoplight clock because, according to him, he needed more lovies in his bed. The best night though,  was maybe the fourth or fifth night, when I went in to check on him (we felt like he needing a little more checking on than usual due to his track record) and he was totally naked in his bed. No diaper, no pajamas. I asked him what that was all about and he said he just did not want to wear a diaper anymore. Some moms might be excited about this, I was not considering it was bed time and I knew that even if he was ready to be potty trained, we had a 10 hour road trip back to St. Louis in two days and I did not want to start any potty training before that. Anyway, after much cajoling, I got him back in his diaper (I did not even worry about the pajamas even though it had been getting down down to the mid fifties at night). I was heading to visit with Nelson's family at a different house and he volunteered to stay with the kids back at our house. I later got a text from Nelson that he went to check on Tripp, could not find him, eventually found him again naked, but this time under the bed, sound asleep. But with his lovie, Blue Dog of course. So he got him in his diaper and back in his bed. I came home and we were getting ready for bed. I thought I should check on him one last time. I did, he was in bed, under his covers and with his diaper on. I thought we were good for the night. I apparently thought wrong. Somewhere around 1 in the morning, I hear crying from his room. He does not normally cry out unless there is good reason so I go in there quickly to find him under the bed, naked, but having peed on himself (and Blue Dog of course). So I cleaned him up, the floor up and tried to put him back to bed. However, he could not have his lovie because it was wet with urine so he would not go back to bed. After trying to get him to sleep in our bed (a big joke), I was desperate so I eventually took him back to his room and gave him a new, made up lovie (Red, the fire truck from Cars which thankfully does not make any noise). I slept in the other twin bed in his room cause I wanted to make sure this would not happen again!! Thankfully he was fine until the morning, we did not mention it to him again and he was fine the next night. All I can say is that there must have been something bizarre in that mountain water, cause he was sure having some issues!!

Our other most memorable adventure was the drive back. We had been going about 4 hours when the tire pressure monitoring light went off. We stopped at the next exit to pump up the tires. All seemed ok. We got back on the road, the light turned back on again. I felt something strange, I pulled over, Nelson got out and of course, we had a completely flat tire.

Nelson called AAA and we were both so glad he did. First, we have an anti-theft nut or whatever it is called, on our hubcap (cause you know, lots of people want to steal hubcaps off my awesome car) and since there was nothing about it in the manual, we had no clue what to do. But the AAA guy did. Next problem- we couldn't get a jack under the car because it was half on/half off the road. The original AAA guy had to call another AAA guy to come with a special jack. They got the spare on, and we were on our way (about 2 hours total at this point). We are in the middle of nowhere Tennessee so we head to the nearest Wal-Mart to get the tire fixed. Nelson goes in and they tell us there will be a two hour wait. To even get our car check out. Ha, apparently they missed the fact that we have two small children and still have six hours ahead of us to drive. So we move on. We found a Discount Tire Company and they could not have been nicer. In about an hour and a half, they got us all taken care of and on the road again. We were doing great, rolling along with our new tire for about thirty minutes, and then we hit traffic. Traffic because the highway we were supposed to take home was closed. I think about this time Lily started screaming because she apparently decided that today was a good day to  not nurse or sleep well. We made our way around the closed highway and were cruising along again. Nelson was getting tired so it was my turn to drive. We stopped at a gas station and get fueled up for the last 3 hours home. I took Tripp in to change his diaper to find out he had pooped and had been sitting in it for hours. and his poor bottom was bleeding. and there was no changing table. so he screamed while I tried to clean him up. Got back on the road. Tripp is asking for dinner. We said no dinner tonight. We are not stopping again. Here- have some candy and chex mix. That makes for a great dinner (as a side note- we have let him watch movies nonstop since the flat tire earlier in the morning. So he was on about hour 10 of movies. We did not care. So we have officially decided from here on out, during a road trip our kids can eat whatever they want and watch as many movies as they want. probably my best parenting decision to date). We are headed into St. Louis. The kids have just fallen asleep.

We hit traffic. The last highway we are supposed to get on is closed. We are stopped, the kids wake up. They both start crying. Nelson and I start laughing at the madness of it all. Thankfully this did not last long and in about 20 minutes, we were home. I kept waiting for Tripp to throw up- I thought that would be the final thing to happen during this drive. Thankfully it did not and my car has already been to Waterway and given some much needed TLC.
There were a few other adventures, but these stand out as the funniest ones, ones worth remembering, and hopefully, ones that will not get repeated!