Vacation 301

Day 3 began only a couple of hours later than Day 2. Ugh. Maddox was ready to go at 5 am, and his brothers shortly after. Their excited chatter of everything they wanted to do that day sounded like the chugging wheels of locomotive bearing down on me. The whoosh-CLAP sound of the drawers being slammed shut as they pulled out their clothes for the day told me the train was close. I tried to ignore the whining "whistle" asking for a snack. I could feel the bed rumbling as the train was climbing over his Mom. I moaned as I rolled over, attempting to avoid the inevitable, but this train was not bound by a track and collided into me with full force. The screeching wheels screaming DA! did little to slow the impact. The giggle in his voice could not stop my ears from ringing, my body from aching, and my eyes from burning due to lack of sleep. Slowly I arose, and began my death march up the 13 stairs to the kitchen in an effort to stop the noise with a bowl of cereal. Immediately, I discovered rule 7.

Rule #7 - Vacation requires stronger coffee. In an effort to maximize fun, kids on vacation play harder, stay up later, and often skip naps. This is especially true when it comes to vacationing with their cousins that they haven't seen for months, if not an entire year. But because the kids stay up later, the adults don't get to have their fun until later, and like the kids, often stay up longer than they should in order to maximize their fun, because after all, they are on vacation too! Next thing you know it's 2 or 3am before you're going to sleep, and you've barely gotten both eyes closed before you're being roused by anxious kids, excited to start another fun-filled day. Take it from me, set the timer on the coffee pot before you go to bed. If it's an older coffee pot. Just start the coffee when you're going to bed. It's so late that it'll probably still be warm when the kids wake you!

Rule #8 - Vacation with family requires Tylenol. We all love family. But no one except for the stay-at-home mom is around their family 24x7, and for most of us, that has about the same effect as the first time we had more than 1 beer on an empty stomach. Time with your family makes you feel good; but a couple of Tylenol makes you feel better.

Rule #9 - Vacation allows swimming to be an acceptable substitue to bathing. Granted, there are a few exceptions, such as the questionable indoor pool where the chlorine content is so high that the fumes in the air burn your eyes. But, in general, when dealing with hot, sweaty, and sticky kids, far better than putting them in the tub is to throw them into the pool. First of all, swimming is far more fun than bathing, and not to mention, it tires them out more than a bath can, and to top it off, they don't stink in the morning! Besides, both activities get them sufficently pruny, which is really the only measure of a good bath anyway.