What a Day!

You know, I'm tired. 
I haven't managed to get caught up from picking Jesse up from the airport, yet.

His plane was delayed about an hour, so instead of leaving here at 10:45pm, I left at 11:45pm.  I had nursed Alex, given him a fresh diaper, and into his jammies/jacket/shoes & socks, and he fell asleep at about 11:15.  I got the other two kids ready, and then we headed out the door.  As soon as I picked up Alex, he woke back up.  And the second his bottom hit the car seat, he started crying.  At first, it wasn't too bad - it was the kind of crying that led me to believe he'd be asleep before we even got to the freeway.

I was wrong by a long shot.  A very, very LONG shot.  He cried the entire way to the Dulles airport.  An hour and a half, folks.  And I could do nothing to stop it.  I kept thinking to myself, "Surely he'll fall asleep before we reach I-70", and a million other variations of that.  I tried to soothe him as best as I could. But by the time we reached I-95 over half an hour later and ran across a rest stop, he was still screaming, only a million times worse, and I was in tears, too.  So when I saw that rest stop exit, I jumped across three lanes of traffic to take it.  Once parked, I bolted out of my seat and ran back to the side of Alex's seat to try and soothe him again. I thought for sure he must want to nurse, since nothing else was calming him.  But I was wrong.  He wouldn't even try to latch on, and I tried a good 5 minutes!!  I was at a loss. No nursing, no pacifier, no diaper change needed.  All I could think is that he was dead tired.  He had managed to stay awake from about 3:45pm until he fell asleep at 11:15 before we left, and of course, then he only slept that half hour before I picked him up.  So I concluded that he was simply overtired, accepted that there was nothing I could do for him, and started back on our drive, thinking he would hopefully fall asleep soon.

But as we kept driving, he kept screaming.  Poor soul, I prayed so hard that he would be soothed and just fall asleep, but it took so much longer than I ever imagined it would.  When we passed the temple on I-495, almost an hour into the trip, he was starting to have small breaks between crying, like he was about to fall asleep.  But he would always start back up again with renewed vigor.  It was simply tortuous.  Finally, finally, he fell asleep within sight of the airport.  Almost a full hour and a half later.  Just two minutes before Jesse called me to tell me he had arrived. 

Luckily, Melinda and Jacob didn't cause a fuss.  They stayed amazingly awake, too, and fell asleep only minutes before Alex did.  All three of them stayed asleep the whole drive home. 

Jesse joined us in the car around 1:30am, and we started the drive back home.  We missed the exit back to 495 (poorly marked - it gave me trouble on the way home from dropping him off, too, but it was daylight then), and had to go a few miles on a different highway, then backtrack, before we could resume our journey.  We got home just about 3am, and had to transfer all the kids into their beds.  Melinda freaked out (she doesn't do well at this sort of situation) and couldn't/wouldn't walk.  I had to carry Alex, of course, and Jesse was going to carry Jacob, but it turns out that he was perfectly fine with walking, though he should have been more out of sorts than Melinda.  And so Melinda was carried in.  Funnily enough, Jacob fell back asleep almost instantly, despite the walking in the cold and back inside, up the stairs, but Melinda had some trouble.

After getting Alex back to sleep, too, I got myself ready for bed as quickly as humanly possible, and laid down on my pillow at promptly 3:21am.  Much too late for grown, aging people like myself!  And even then, it took me a while to fall asleep, just like it always does, even when I'm extremely tired.  Luckily, since the kids stayed up so late, too, they slept in for us.  I'm actually not sure when they did get up, but I think it was somewhere around 10am.  I personally stayed in bed until almost 11, but it still wasn't enough.

On Monday, Jesse took the day off, sensibly.  He needed the sleep, too, after all.  We actually got snow on Monday, FINALLY!  We enjoyed watching it fall most of the day, on and off, but it still only accumulated barely enough to cover the grass.  It was kind of humorous, there was a group of children across the way that were at the top of the hill with their sleds when the grass was only half-covered.  I'm not even sure how well their sledding attempt could work.  If that doesn't give you and idea of how long it seems like we've been waiting for snow, I don't know what could. 

We decided to cut the kids' hair while Jesse was home.  Melinda was way overdue for a trimming of her bangs (since she doesn't want to just grow them out), and Jacob was looking more and more like a big ball of hair than a little boy.  Jesse just trimmed the back and sides of his hair, and a teeeeny bit of his bangs, so he looks more presentable now.  I did a fairly good job with Melinda's bangs, if I do say so myself, and got them just the right length and almost perfectly straight on the first pass with scissors.  Jesse re-buzzed his hair just before his trip.  Now I'm the only one in desperate need of a haircut.

After they had their hair cut and a good long soak in a bath to get the itchy pieces of hair off, the snow was coming down pretty good again.  And we realized that if we weren't going to completely fail at parenting, we needed to get them out in the snow to play while it was here.  Because if we've learned anything this winter, it's that we aren't getting much snow at all.  And kids love snow, of course.  It just was too bad for us that we were so tired and didn't really want to go out in the snow...

So, we rushed around, getting them dry and in two layers of clothes, mittens and coats on, and Jesse took them out to try and catch a few snowflakes before they stopped again.  I ran around trying to find a bunting to put Alex in.  I hadn't really bothered looking earlier in the winter, since we weren't getting any snow.  And after a few minutes of looking, I was only seeing a rather small one, but I gave up and squeezed it into him, anyway.  Poor kid could hardly move in it, and fell down and could only pretty much lay there while I got my shoes and coat on.

Which is why I am embarrassed that I actually put him down on his feet once we got outside, expecting him to be just fine.  What can I say?  Can I blame sleep deprivation?  But yes, within one second of me putting him down, he fell forward and face planted right into the snow.  Oh, I felt so terrible!!  Even for someone who knows what snow feels like, it's an absolute shock to get snow in the face.  But Alex didn't even know what was coming!  I wiped off the icy wetness as quickly as I could, but his face turned so red.  I was lucky that he was too curious about all the snow to complain very long.  I sat him down to explore it a little, and he could still hardly move around. 

Melinda and Jacob were having fun, too.  Jacob was almost exclusively trying (and succeeding, despite our warnings) to eat the snow, while Melinda spent her time almost exclusively throwing handfuls of snow up into the air.  We didn't venture far from our apartment, and we don't have a sled this year, so we ended up not staying outside very long. 

I took dinner to a woman that night, so I got to drive in the snow. Only our parking lot was bad, the streets were well-salted.  But I admit to having a little too much fun doing a little fish-tail around a parking lot corner.  ;) 

We got the kids into bed as soon as possible that night.  It was obvious that they were very tired - they complained of being hungry but wouldn't even touch their dinner.  They fell asleep quickly, which was nice, and Jesse and I watched a movie.  And went to bed early.

And here it is Tuesday now, and I still feel like I crossed a few time zones instead of just picked up my husband from the airport. 

Alex is cranky, he's definitely teething.  Whether that's the source of his runny nose or not, I don't know.  But he's got a 7th little tooth just barely poking out of his gums.  It will be his 3rd one on the bottom. 

I watched the inauguration on TV today.  Well, as much as I could.  It was hard to hear more than a few sentences at a time coherently, with Jacob and Melinda literally bouncing all over me.  On Sunday, I summarized what Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is all about for Melinda, since she was curious.  It felt very meaningful to be celebrating that specific holiday just before today's inauguration.  I didn't vote for Obama, I voted for Chuck Baldwin, who represents my overall views better, but I still think Obama will make a good president.  And I won't deny that his speeches are very moving.  I'm hopeful that perhaps there will be some good changes made in our country.  And I'm certainly proud of step that the country has taken.  As he said in his speech,

"This is the meaning of [America's] liberty and our creed: why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration across this magnificent Mall and why a man whose father less than 60 years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath," the president noted.
"So let us mark this day with remembrance, of who we are and how far we have traveled," he said.

 It's certainly a day worth remembering, the day our 44th president took office.   I saw a link to a slideshow of American presidents today, and it sort of shocked me - I have essentially lived through only 4 presidents before this.  Reagan took office before I was 1.  George H.W. Bush was president when I was 9-13.  Clinton was elected and took office when I was 13 until 21, and George W. Bush was obviously president from then until now.  It's a little humbling to think I really know so little of American presidential elections... I only have a solid memory of 4 changes of power, if you include this most recent one with Obama, and you can hardly count when George H.W. Bush took office.  I was hardly concious of the political world at age 9, after all!

Anyway.  A new week.  My husband's home.  Our country's president is new.  What a day.  :)