Vacation?

Yes, after the start of our two week hiatus from work stress, I will begin this with a question mark.

It took FOR-EV-ER to get ourselves packed up after work on Friday.  We were about an hour later than what we wanted to be with picking up Carter, we still had a Costco run to make and traffic karma just wasn’t in our favor as we were stuck behind people on Highway 2 going 40mph on a 60mph road. Highway 2 is a lovely stretch of road that meanders through the mountains, up over Stevens Pass and into the Wenatchee area where our cabin is located.  However, it is a two lane road most of the way, with limited ability to pass other cars. And when you have a toddler in back watching Toy Story, refusing to fall asleep, and it is 9pm … being stuck in a line of cars is not how you want to spend your time!

We made it finally and Nana, Papa, Chip, Sandy and the kids were already here. Carter did finally fall asleep at around 9:25 and then woke up again as we were unpacking the car.  We tried to get him in the cabin and back down to sleep as soon as possible, but the effort was fruitless – he was awake and wanted to know what was going on. And he was exhausted, so he was overreacting to EVERYTHING.  Sadly, this included putting him in his pack-n-play to sleep. So he ended up sleeping between Jeremy and I that night and none of us slept well.

So Saturday we put Carter down early for his first nap, knowing that he didn’t sleep well the night before.  Papa was outside working on the ski doo’s and the rest of us were in the family room chatting and playing games.  At one point I heard a door open and close twice, and had figured that Papa had come in.  Someone looked outside and he was still out there, so I rounded the corner to our bedroom door and see Carter standing there, grinning at me.  Uhhhhh nice.  He climbed out of his pack-n-play and opened the door to come out to see all of us.  And this is the beginning of the end – we may have to buy a big-kid bed soon because I will bet money he tries to crawl out of his crib once we get home.

Thankfully Saturday night was fairly uneventful and we all got some much needed rest. Any sort of bed time now meant that one of us has to stay in the room until Carter falls asleep or he continues to climb out. We knocked off early on Sunday night only to be woken around 3am with Lucy panting and scratching at her kennel door.  I wondered if she was hot because she was cooped up, so I let her out so she could stretch out next to me on the floor at the side of the bed.  As I crawled back in bed, I heard her crawl underneath the bed and make a noise that was somewhere in the range of a dog fart and this horrid smell erupted. We flipped on the light and looked under the bed where poor Lucy had a bout of diarrhea.  We got her outside where she proceeded to go more AND throw up, making us speculate that in her roaming around outside all day, she got into something.  I ended up cleaning up the mess for the next 45 minutes and when I was finally done with it, Carter woke up.  All three of us moved to a bedroom upstairs so that the downstairs room could air out. Carter of course would not go back to sleep and again ended up between Jeremy and I on our bed.  And then I had to get up with Lucy about 3 more times before we all finally crawled out of bed around 7am.  Thankfully we have a carpet shampoo’r up here, Jeremy did the final cleaning on the carpet in the bedroom so all traces of poor Lou were gone.

Monday night we divided and conquered.  I slept in the downstairs bedroom with Lucy, figuring she would need to go out throughout the night and Carter and Jeremy slept upstairs. I ended up getting up a couple of times with Lucy and she continued to have issues that included throwing up.  Then my mind started wandering and I wondered if she had gotten into some poison and I went into this dark place where I imagined that her insides were being eaten away by something she got into. Thankfully I came back to reality and realized her breathing was normal, there was no blood in her vomit, and other the not being able to keep anything down, she wasn’t acting funny. And this morning she ate canned dog food and some scrambled eggs and is acting more like herself again, so I think we may hopefully be on the tail end of whatever this is.

And with all of that, now you know why it is “Vacation?”