Babysoroos

A few days ago, Timothy refused to nap. Absolutely refused. Then demanded to be pushed in the swing.

A little while later…..

Sound asleep.

We’ve been working hard in our yard for the last few months, so we decided that with predicted hot weather (finally!) this last weekend, we needed to go do something fun, especially for the kids.

My plan was to find a U-pick strawberry farm, but that didn’t quite work out. When we eventually found one, most of the way to the north end of the island, we were one day early for the season. Still, they had strawberries for sale from their own, non-U-pick fields, so we bought a bunch to make jam. Then, since we were nearly there anyway, we headed on up to Deception Pass for our picnic.

It was glorious at the beach, but thank goodness we were early! As we were leaving, there was a constant stream of cars entering the park and I’m sure it was getting to be really crowded.

The next part of the plan worked out much, much better! I recently discovered that there is a public, outdoor pool a little south of Coupeville. Next to the water, with views of the mountains and the passing ships.

It wasn’t crowded and one of the pools has an even depth of 3ft, which is perfect for Ben to bounce around with his head above water. He had a blast. Even Timothy warmed up to it pretty quickly.

After an hour in the pool, the only way we could get Ben to leave was with the promise of strawberries in the car and that we’d come back soon.

And then…. barbeque. We’d been to the farmer’s market on Saturday and had loads of little artichokes to grill. Along with our standards of mushrooms, potatoes and tofu. And also, a few tiny onions that had been “liberated” from our garden by a certain one year old.

Ben thought he’d try some wine. (It was empty.)

But this time, something different.

We made cheesecake, and since we needed crushed graham crackers for the crust, I put some boys who love hammering to work.

They enjoyed themselves, the cheesecakes (little individual sized ones) were delicious. Sorry, no photos before they all got eaten. What was I thinking?

I’m sure we’ll do it again soon, it was a hit all around.

Timothy had started throwing up the day before we left. He seemed mostly fine on Thursday. Until the flight. He was cranky and yelling and crying and wanting to be held but then lunging for the floor. He finally slept for a little while, then woke up and threw up all over him and me. Immediately the pilot says “Sit down, we’re beginning our descent.” Great. We sit down and strap in and try to change his clothes and my shirt. Then Ben throws up all over himself. So Eric had to get him cleaned up and changed.

We got off the plane, Ben was a limp lump, basically wanting to lay on the floor while we got our bags and our rental car sorted out. He threw up again in the parking garage on the way to the car.

Our plan had been to arrive in Minneapolis at 8pm (6pm for us), get our car, get dinner, put the boys in jammies and drive for four hours to our hotel in NW Iowa. Arriving around 1am, 11pm by our body clocks. Totally do-able.

Yeah. Not.

None of us wanted dinner.

Half an hour out of Minneapolis I threw up.

Half an hour later, Eric was starting to feel woozy, so we decided to stop at the next town and find a hotel room. Which was a damn good idea, because as soon as he’d got us a room, Eric threw up too, right in the parking lot.

We spent the whole night taking turns throwing up in this random hotel, all four of us miserable and hardly getting any sleep.

And then there was diarrhea.

It got better, slowly. We made it to the original hotel eventually, on Friday afternoon, made a brief appearance at the rehearsal dinner Friday night. Then Ben threw up again.

Saturday morning, I had a throbbing miserable headache on top of everything else — hadn’t had any caffeine in two days what with that whole not-keeping-food-down thing. So I tried some hotel room coffee. My stomach sent it right back up, but I guess it was down there long enough to help my head, at least.

We made it to the wedding, barely. Ben slept through nearly the whole thing. We lasted maybe half an hour at the reception with Ben looking increasingly miserable and weepy. It had been 12 hours since he last threw up, and he’d eaten that afternoon so we thought he was doing better, but as soon as we got back to the hotel, he did it again.

It was a waterpark hotel, and Ben was sooo very very excited about the waterpark. We were supposed to be there for three nights, plenty of time to go play. But we didn’t get to go once.

The rest of the week was less eventful. On Sunday (Mother’s Day), we drove 3 hours to Indianola, the town where Eric’s uncle and grandma live, and managed to do three days worth of pukey laundry and have dinner with Eric’s parents before they left. We’d mostly been avoiding people up til then.

Then we just hung out in town for 3 days, went to the zoo, played in the pool (just a regular small swimming pool, no waterpark, but still fun), went to the park, that kind of thing. All the other relatives had already left and the ones living in town were working. We made brief visits to Eric’s grandma each day, but not too long because a) it wore her out and b) watching the kids in her place wore us out.

Then, the best part of the whole darn trip.

We had booked a hotel near Minneapolis airport for Thursday night, before our flight on Friday, to avoid a four hour drive + flight in one day. Just some basic hotel.

Well, we changed it. I googled for waterparks in Minneapolis and found the Water Park of America, even nearer the airport and even slightly cheaper for a room. We booked it.

We were there when the water park opened at 4pm, and we played for 4 hours. And went back the next morning for 1.5 hours. Ben LOVED it. Tim was not so sure, but it was definitely the highlight of the trip for three of us.

We’ve been home for over two weeks now, and we’re only just getting back into a groove. Or, perhaps I’m the only one who’s taken this long to recover. But I’m finally ready to start posting photos and updating again.