Hurry Up and Rest

It sure takes a lot to hurry up and rest on a vacation, but we've been working on it over the past few days!  Sometimes I feel like I am constantly cleaning, yet the house looks like I've given up on life.  How does that happen?  Oh yeah.  A toddler.

I'm really looking forward to getting out of town....  We have had a busy, crazy couple of weeks involving many of our family members.  My miscarriage.  Chris's grandma's broken hip.  My grandma found in the street by police at 12:30 am--she thought someone broke into her house, so she was banging on neighbors' windows.  And my sister ended up in the ER with severe pain.  It was gallstones, which really sucks, but we were afraid it was something more serious.  She had surgery yesterday and is home!  We've been on an emotional rollercoaster, so we booked a hotel in Myrtle Beach for four nights.  Chris's grandpa lives down there and I've never even met the guy, so we thought it might be nice to head down there.  Honestly, Chris was so helpful during my difficult time a couple of weeks ago that I think that he forgot to deal with his loss himself.  I think it is all just hitting him now over the past few days, so this vacation is really needed.

Our route to vacation is long and twisted.  My parents are kind enough to watch our pets, so first we will have to drive four hours to their house.  We'll relax for a couple of days so we aren't constantly on the road.  Then, we'll drive six hours to South Carolina.  We'll stay for four nights....  Then back six more hours to my parents' house.  And then four more hours to our house.  That is 20 hours of driving with a toddler.  Oh my.  The original plan was for them to visit us this weekend and take the dogs back to cut down on some extra driving, but my grandma is staying with them, so they really can't visit at this point.  It is a lot of driving with a babe (I wouldn't worry otherwise), but it can't compare to the time that we drove for 50 hours in one long weekend for a job interview over spring break in 2009 (for a job I didn't get)....  And we get to go to South of the Border!!

We have had some fun over the past few days too.  I took Eliot to a playgroup again.  He is doing great socializing with other babes and I'm really enjoying meeting new people.  We took Eliot to Riverside Park where he saw the train.  He definitely recognizes the difference between cars and trains now, but his word for train is something like "dris" or "tris".  It's funny.  We're getting better at the pronunciation of it.  "Train" is kind of a hard word to say....

Today, I cleaned out Eliot's drawer of 6-12 month clothes!  I showed Chris afterward and he said, "Don't you think that maybe he can wear this shirt just one more time?"  Probably, but that is how I ended up with an overflowing dresser with a bunch of 9 month shirts that, in short, do not fit at all, hoping that I could maybe see him wear it just one more time.  It does make me really sad to pack away all those clothes that I had memories with.  And sometimes I don't know why I'm keeping them because I don't think we'll have another winter baby--the seasons will probably be all mismatched--and I might not have another boy when we eventually have a second babe anyway.  Oh well.  I'm sure they will overlap at some point.

Do I sound like I'm complaining?  I don't mean to.  Maybe that is why I haven't written in a few days.  A lot of seemingly negative things have been occurring, but I'm not grumbling my way through.  I'm trying to be positive--and I feel positive!--but I think sometimes just writing about it all can make me sound pessimistic.

To do later today:  some very overdue filing!