on-site blogging

Greetings from sunny Steubenville and my quiet nap time perch where I am taking over my mom's laptop and sipping my dad's miller light at 2:30 in the afternoon. It has been less than 24 hours of playing somewhat single mom over here at my parent's while Mike retreats 5 minutes from us on campus, my hair has not been brushed in 2 days and I am drinking well before 5 p.m.-- a small glimpse into how it's going so far, awesome and insane.

I would say that the girls are in rare form because of Mike not being around, but things had starting getting out of control well before he even started his retreat/conference/week of study and prayer. Yesterday morning greeted me with a very dehydrated and vomiting 4-year-old due to an entire Saturday of running, playing and swimming with her fellow blood relatives with barely a sip of water to drink, in 90 degree weather and INTENSE humidity.

Because I am an all star mother who knows how to take care of kids real good.

Backing up a bit, the drive to Ohio was really very pleasant because we decided to break it up into 2 days this time and I feel as if we will never be able to do the whole thing at once again. Never mind that it is only a 6 hour drive, doing only 4 1/2 the first day and much less than that the second day felt so fabulous and we got to visit some wonderful cousins in between. It was lovely.

I do not know what it is about sleeping in other beds that makes Bernadette and Naomi turn back into hellish sleepers and disgustingly early risers, but I would very much appreciate it if whatever it is would die. After 3 nights in a row of random middle of the night screaming from being kicked by one another, Naomi claiming that there are cuts between all of her toes or begging for non-existent sweaters, and then waking up a full hour earlier than normal even though bedtime was a full hour later than normal, I am ready for this to start feeling like "home" since we will be here for the next 2 weeks and I might just have to start sleeping with head phones on and hoping that the girls decide to call on someone else circa 2 a.m. The phantom vomiting that I heard this morning which made me jump full throttle out of bed at 5 a.m. only to realize that no one was awake or vomiting didn't help either. I only exaggerate a little, as always.

The only civilized one in this family.

And so we are here, Mike has temporarily checked out until Thursday, the girls are- as far as I know- well hydrated, not vomiting and happily napping, and I am having a fabulous time with my families despite sleeplessness, tired, defiant, and occasionally psychotic tantrumming children, to which I raise my glass and drink.