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Road Trip

We have returned home from an 8 day road trip to visit family over the Christmas break. We left about noon on the 26th and spent that night in a hotel.

The 27th was spent visiting the girls' aunt, uncle and cousins who moved out of state last summer. They live in the mountains and it was a new experience for we flatlanders to visit this beautiful area. I climbed straight up the small hill that is their front yard five times in two hours to take three kids on five potty trips from where they were playing with the neighbor's toys. Theo, the big boys, and the cousins all hiked to the top of the little mountain behind their home. It was the steepest hill any of them had ever climbed and to get back they simply sat on their butts in the dried leaves and slid back home. (Only later thinking about snakes.)

This aunt has been invaluable to me and I truly enjoy her. It was a great visit and makes me committed to keeping in touch with their family. I drove away with lots of thoughts about class and poverty and what is middle class anyway. It really is all a mind-set, not a dollar amount. Aunt and uncle have middle class values: stability, dependability, education for their children, getting married and staying that way. Grandma (who is aunt's sister) probably makes more money per week but she's so much poorer due to chronic instability, evictions, bailing out her drug-dependent son, etc.

Being poor is hard. Being poor with a poverty mindset is a life sentence.

The 28th we drove on south to Grandpa and Grandma's house, getting there very late at night. This is Theo's dad and step-mom. They live where it's warm and we soaked up all the sun we could. My kids and I were dressed in tank tops while the locals were wearing jackets in the high 60s, low 70s weather.

We spent all day from Dec 29th to Jan 1st with them. It was lovely to see the "new" Grandpa and Grandma embrace the girls and truly welcome them. It was their first time meeting them and I wasn't sure how things would go. Besides the fact that it's just plain A LOT to host all seven of us. So much food and noise and bedding and toys, oh my!

But they had tons of toys because their granddaughter lives nearby and they watch her often. And they were much, much more laid back than when she first married Theo's dad (about a year after we married). It was really nice to reconnect as we don't keep in touch all that well.

And they kept complimenting me on the little ones' behavior! Wow, that sure was nice. One day we spent most of it outside and then went to a nicer restaurant for dinner. All three kids sat nicely and ate without fuss. Grandpa kept going on how amazing it was. "They just sat there!" he kept saying, "without complaining!" I mean, they each had a huge basket of french fries and chicken nuggets and they were very hungry and tired so it wasn't that big of a reach to me but it sure amazed him. At one point I took both girls to the bathroom and even that shocked him. "I didn't know how you'd manage that!" he said when I got back. I looked at him and then said, "you realize that normally I have to take all 3 to the bathroom when we're in public? I mean, I can't just leave one or two outside the bathroom by themselves." He nearly passed out at the thought of escorting three kids to the bathroom simultaneously.

It's fascinating what people find stressful or not. They both not only tolerated, but encouraged, all the kids to ride two electric mini-4-wheelers all through the house! Each one making a high-pitched whine while the kids crashed into walls, got stuck behind chairs, and drove over toys. I would've gone bonkers at the noise and chaos but they grinned and kept recharging the stupid things! But, eating out and using a public restroom--now that was impossibly insane and never something they could do with their 5 yr old granddaughter whom they babysit every week.

The thing that struck me while we were away from home  was realizing how different the big and little kids schedules really are. Essentially, the littles sleep from 7pm to 7am while the bigs sleep from 1 or 2am until noon. Then, Theo and I, while on vacation, tried to sneak in naps in the afternoon so that meant pretty much someone in our family was sleeping all the time. Made it a bit hard to schedule activities.

We left the morning of the 2nd and got home late on the 3rd after long days of driving. Everyone did surprisingly well. Theo had rigged up headphones so each of the littles could watch cartoons on a screen without bothering us but they didn't even use them all the time. They also napped or looked out the window or colored or did sticker books. We stopped about every 3 hrs for a break and that was enough to keep them from getting too restless or having any major accidents (I did have a diaper on Kate the whole time, at 2 yrs 10 months she still has a very weak bladder). But Jane was like this till she was at least 3.5 yrs old.

The last day, while driving home, Jane was really asking to be home already. She started getting sad and talking about toys from her old life that she misses. I've noticed sadness over specific objects is how she expresses stress or fear or grief. I talked to her about our trip. That this was called a Vacation. But it was temporary and we always came back home. And, yes, in her old life she moved around a lot and lost toys or clothes or blankets in the process but now, in our family, we always lived in the same house and had the same routines. Just giving her the word "vacation" was really helpful. She kept going over and over it and now has brought it up again today--needing to reassure herself that this trip was the anomaly and not the norm.

She was super happy all day today. Tonight at bedtime she said how much she loves her bed and that we don't go on "cation" any more but we "always stay home".

I felt unwell most of today and stayed in bed. I couldn't tell if I was really getting sick or just overly tired. Finally I took a hot bath and did a mini spa treatment. Two hours alone and all my ill symptoms are gone. I realized that essentially I'd been holding in constant low grade stress for about 8 days straight and I just desperately needed to relax.

So, we survived a major 9-states-each-way road trip! We reconnected with lovely family members. We made more family memories in this, Seth's last year at home, before college. The girls did not become unhinged in any terrible ways from the upheaval. All in all--success!

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