On Friday 01/07/2011 myself, my husband, our 17 month old daughter, my mother, my sister, my brother-in-law, and my 7 month old nephew embarked on a road trip from PA to FL to surprise my grandparents for their 60th wedding anniversary. I had visions of sleeping in and sitting around the vacation villa writing blog posts to my little heart’s content while my daughter played with her cousin and was supervised by the four other adults present. BUT…things didn’t quite work out like that. This is Part 4 (the final installment) of my story…

Read But…Part 1, But…Part 2, and But…Part 3 first!

In South Carolina my brother-in-law (who drives like a pokey old man) was driving 74 in 70mph zone and was pulled over by a State Trooper in an unmarked car. Now we have two upset babies in the van that want out of their car seats and my brother-in-law was a nervous wreck because he had no idea why he was pulled over. The State Trooper said that he pulled him over for speeding (you should’ve seen how fast the cars were passing us on the highway…this was a super dangerous road for the cop to make a traffic stop on). My husband was in the passenger seat and didn’t say a word but left his badge sitting on his leg during the stop. We’re not sure if that’s what did it but thankfully the trooper gave Matt a warning and told him to “be safe”. We were able to keep driving straight through and we made it back to home sweet home at 2:30am on Sunday morning. Hubby unpacked the van and I got the little lady to sleep in her own crib for the first time in nine days. We can finally get back to our normal routine. But…

Actually for the most part Adaline has readjusted rather well. Aside from her nap/sleep schedule being off an hour here or there she jumped right back into sleeping regularly in her crib and she miraculously has abundant and unconditional love for Daddy and Grandma that she somehow couldn’t channel while in FL.

She was no longer attached to my hip and other than being a little upset if I left the room, she was perfectly happy to completely ignore me most of the day. *She still had a cough and her runny nose was getting worse. She cried every time we changed her diaper. For the most part Sunday 01/16, Monday 01/17, and Tuesday 01/18 she was a perfect angel, but for whatever reason on Wednesday 01/19 she decided to break out the tantrums. She was screaming and crying and running from me and saying “no” every chance she got. At one point she swatted me in the face (um, I don’t think so, young lady!) which resulted in a very strong reprimand from mommy followed by her very first time out (sorta). It was a long and exhausting 20 days and I was looking forward to putting it all behind me and getting back to blogging. But…

Considering I spent the first week of the month sick with the flu, the second week of the month playing conjoined twin with my daughter in FL, and the third week of the month reorganizing the house after vacation whilst getting the smack down from my precious first born child…the Christmas decorations were still up. I’m not sure why the magical elves did not come and put everything away for me, but they didn’t. And so we spent the fourth week of the month taking down Christmas decorations at our house and the church. After my “vacation” with no internet access I also have about 80 million emails to read and about 40 posts to write. And just when I thought it was all going to get back to normal my husband and I decided that we are fat (or on our way there at least) and started doing the 30 Day Shred in the evenings. Thursday was our 4th day in a row, yay us! But of course all of the physical fitness cuts into my blogging time (boo!).

I’m hoping that I have a spare moment to get a half-decent post up in the near future. Perhaps this post (turned “series”) was so long that you’ve quite had your fill of me for awhile and can do with another break from my rambling. Nonetheless, if I do find said spare moment this weekend I’m going to be blogging next week about the other parts of our trip…all of the details I left out of these four posts. (What?! There’s, more? You left out details? How is that even possible?! Jenn, say it isn’t so…) These will be real stories and not fragments of me complaining in a blog post about why I don’t have any time to write blog posts. Hmmm…

But…no more “buts” for awhile (I hope).

*Adaline is feeling fine now. Her cough and runny nose are now gone and she’s not crying during every diaper change anymore. The tantrums have stopped but she has been showing much more of a temper lately than what we’re used too.

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