Wednesday, January 6, 2010

The drive back to VA and learning your alphabet from broken toys…

So after seeing all the family, a bunch of friends, running around like crazy – and, oh yeah, that little home repair project… we hit the road on Monday. I got up early to go to church with my Mom (it was my Dad’s birthday and the mass was for him. She joked that the baby must have been thinking – man, church THREE times in one week?! What is this? I figured that definitely would have made my Dad happy!). The little monkey was the hit of the morning mass – the only baby there and lots of people my Mom knew excited to meet the grandchild! We came back and made some breakfast and I figured we’d be on the road early. As always, I’d underestimated the time needed to leave any locale – esp. with the haul the munchkin had managed at the holidays!

We finally made it to the road around 1 and headed first to Philly to visit a friend of my husband’s. His wife just had their second three weeks earlier, so we thought we’d go check out the new addition.

We’d brought a gift for the new baby and his big sister as well as some Christmas packages (and were excited for the room we’d gain moving them out of the car!). One toy that I’d really thought was fun was this beehive with magnet letters. You put each letter in and it tells you what it is and some words with that letter. Their daughter opened it right up and put then N in. O. One. Ostrich. Wait… what? The Mom tried a few times, but it was convinced that this letter was O. Uh-oh. Was it all of them? Hmm.. No, looks, like the K is working. Let’s try B. Mom told the little girl – B. Bus. She put it in the slot and A. Ant. Oh crap! Worse than that the little girl looked at the block with a picture of a bus on it and said. A. Bus.

I was mortified. The Dad told me that it was OK – she doesn’t know her letters anyway. I pointed out that she never would with this toy!

He took a look at it and discovered that one of the sensors was stuck down, so any letter that didn’t have that particular sensor on it wound up with the extra pushed down and the machine assumed one letter later. He was able to pull it back up and thank goodness! The toy worked! I pulled the munchkin away from any attempt to touch it as I figured that status was pretty tenuous. Sounds like a good time to leave – you know, big drive ahead of us!

We decided to take the Western route to avoid traffic (it was getting close to rush hour between our late start and our detour). The baby slept all the way to Gettysburg when we stopped for dinner making for a nice trip. We went to a little diner and I brought her into the ladies room to change her on the floor (no table and a massive poop – what a fun combo!). After she nearly got hit in the head by the next person coming in, I somehow managed to get her changed without too much floor exposure (public restroom, diner/bar... Yeah, I just wanted to dip her in purell after). She ate a little while we ate as well and then it was back on the road. After the quiet couple of hours from Philly to Gettysburg, we were hopeful. But no luck! She cried the rest of the way home (about an hour). We finally got home to change her for bed and it turned out she’d pooped again (not her M.O., so I hadn’t even thought to check). The poor kid was probably sitting in it for the past hour! We finally got the car unloaded and got her sleep. Phew!

Nothing like a nice restful holiday....

1 comment:

I love comments! Come leave me some blog love!