Seriously. Ever.

After days of insatiable nursing beginning in the haunting hours of the night and continuing in earnest until the rest of the house wakes up, I never want to be touched, by anyone, ever again.

By the time Otter is finished with his 4 a.m. to 7 a.m. nurse, I am ready to push all creatures as far away from me as possible and flee to a land where I am the only sentient object for miles.

My bones begin to feel as though they want to leap out of my skin and run away.

Of course, I can fall back on my wealth of patience and energy to get me through this trying time…. oh wait… I have no patience, I have no energy!! I haven’t slept well in months, and I have slept incredibly poorly over the last week.

I’m a Mommy on the Edge people!!!

Okay, it’s been days since I have had more than a handful of hours of sleep at night. Otter is waking up at four a.m. to nurse, and last night, he was up all night. Either he is in a growth spurt, or my life is about to get very interesting.

Ugh.

Well, to continue the fun of Thanksgiving…

On Friday we went to Suzie’s for the night, and enjoyed watching the children run and play. We put all three girls in sleeping bags in Elise’s room for bed, and they were quite happy with their slumber party. However, Monkey came into the living room about Ten p.m. in tears, saying “Mommy, Lydia is asleep and Elise is asleep and I want to be asleep but I can’t fall asleep!” I made a little nest for her in Lydia’s room and tucked her in. She was out almost immediately.

We went to a bouncy gym with the kids on Saturday. What a genius idea that is, a huge warehouse full of large bounce castles, mazes, and slides. It was an instant hit with the children, and they ran around like fiends. Even Otter enjoyed a little bounce.

After the gym we grabbed some yummy southern BBQ and headed back to Jack’s for a quiet evening, a delicious pot roast, and packing. Otter chose to spend Saturday night not sleeping at all, so I was a joy for the long drive home on Sunday, but even so, it was pretty mellow. Otter and Monkey were both a little cranky, but really, what can one expect from children cooped up in a car at the end of a family trip?

Well… Sir Cranky Sleepless Hunger Fiend is crying again, so I am off a’milking.

Happy 300th Blog Post! Thanks to everyone who has thought me interesting enough to read. I can hardly believe I have come up with 300 things to say!

I hope you all had a happy thanksgiving. We drove up to Virginia Beach to spend the Holiday with our Aunt, Uncle, and Cousins. It was a lovely journey, beginning on Wednesday at 9:45 am, when we all got in the car with our luggage, snacks, and baby jump system and began the 6 and a half hour trek to VA. The trip in was amazing, Otter didn’t cry much at all, Monkey didn’t complain much at all, and Lee and I were gazing at each other in wonder as we realized we actually enjoyed a long drive with our children.

During my crazed pumpkin pie making I had whipped up a pumpkin custard for Otter to eat while we made the epic journey. I loaded it into a little pink tupperware container and packed it into the diaper bag. We stopped at Taco Bell for lunch (yes it is the only place we can get anything resembling southwestern mexican food in the East), and I opened the container to begin feeding Mr. O.

Lee took one look at the brown, gloppy, swirled custard, and said “You can’t feed him that, it looks like poo”.

I looked down at the custard, “but it’s not poo, it’s custard, and we know that”, said I as I scooped some up in his little spoon and started to feed him his lovingly handcrafted holiday custard.

The problem was, it really did look like poo. It looked a lot like poo. In fact, it looked so very much like poo that I couldn’t feed it to him, so I threw the custard out and gave him a packet of Mum-Mums. (That was a waste of an hour and a half of culinarily expressed love.)

We continued on our way, stopping for gas at a lovely little dive right next to an amazing sunset. Both Monkey and I went snapping away at the sunset with our cameras (She received my old one when I bought the SLR). Collectively we must have taken a hundred pictures. I had more fun photographing her than I did photographing the sunset.


We got on our way again, arrived around dinner time and settled into Aunt Letitia and Uncle Jack’s comforting hospitality.

On Thursday we went over to Lee’s cousin Suzie’s house, and played her favorite game, “Exhaust the Children.” She oohed and ahhed over Otter, and threatened to gobble up his thighs a few times. He really took to her, and enjoyed watching Monkey run around with Lydia and Elise, her cousins.

Afterwards we went back to Jack’s and Letitia’s for a delicious turkey dinner, with all the fixins, and pie. Lots of pie. There was pumpkin and soy pumpkin pie (courtesy of me), Pecan pie (courtesy of Suzie), and Apple pie (courtesy of Ruth). All of them were yummy, and even my separate pie stomach was taxed with the effort of tasting them all.

The trip was very pleasant, and I have more to share, but currently a certain young man is telling me to hurry up and nurse, so more later!