Last Trip Out West For Awhile

The kids and I made one final trip to Pecos and Carlsbad before Clara starts school. We won't be able to just pick up and head out whenever we want now. Sigh. This is a looong post in which I go on and on about Robert's behavior, so feel free to just look at the pictures :)

So Robert did pretty good on the drive there. He did get antsy here and there along the way, but we made it without any significant crying fits. He would only make it about half way through any movie before he was tired of it. I have to give Clara props for not freaking out every time we had to change the movie so Robert wouldn't cry. I guess she didn't want Robert to cry as much as I didn't want him to. We left the house at 6:30 and got to Pecos at 4:30. He only napped for about 30 minutes.

After a long day, I went to put him in his pack and play to go to sleep. He stood up as I was walking out but I figured he'd lay back down and fall asleep quickly. I was very wrong. He screamed for a couple of minutes and then he came waltzing down the hallway. I was mentally freaking out. What on earth was I going to do with him this week! Almost every nap and bedtime was a battle. He didn't get any good naps that week and it took about 1-2 hours to get him down almost every night. I'm sure my mom and dad were ready to see us go. Again, Clara did so well. She didn't complain about his incessant screaming every night while she was trying to go to sleep in the same room.

Then Robert decided to go and add more misery to our week by cutting some two year molars. He was impossible to handle all week. He was soaking through shirts like he did when he was a baby and even Tylenol wasn't helping most of the time. He threw more fits than ever and they were more intense than ever. There was nothing I could do to help him get through them. There were several times he just screamed at the top of his lungs for an hour or two. Trying to hold him or distract him just made it worse. The one thing that pulled him out of some of them was watching a Dora video. As a result, he watched just a bit too much tv on this trip.

We got to Pecos on a Monday. On Tuesday we drove to Kermit to have lunch with Linsey, Brody, Cooper and my dad. His office is in Kermit. Then we went to the little water park in Wink to let the kids play. I hadn't been there before and assumed it was a flat surface with the buckets and sprays just dumping on the ground, but it was 1.5 feet deep. I hadn't brought my swimsuit or any kind of floating device for Robert so it was a little difficult chasing him around and keeping him from falling into the water face first. That's why there are no pictures. It was past naptime when we left and Robert was none too happy about that. I was sooooo embarrassed at the angry fit he threw as we were leaving. I could not get out of there fast enough. He wouldn't walk, wouldn't ride in the wagon, wouldn't let me hold him and was screaming uncontrollably. We got him back to the house and he switched it off like nothing ever happened and happily scampered off to play.

We took it easy on Wednesday and tried to let him regroup. On Thursday we headed to Carlsbad for a few hours. I had intended to take the pack and play and let him get a good nap so we could extend our stay a little while, but since that idea was off the table, the trip ended up being shorter than I had wanted. I couldn't spend an hour or two trying to get him to nap in an unfamiliar place and he couldn't go all day without a nap. We headed back to Pecos when he started getting tired and hard to handle. Robert had fun showing Nanny all of his cars and telling her what noises each of them make. Christmas was the last time we had been to Carlsbad, so Robert had changed a lot since the last time she saw him. We got in the car and Robert was asleep in under 3 minutes.

I honestly don't remember much about the next couple of days. I think my mind has blocked out the horribleness. There was outside play, fits, I think we ate, Dora, and more fits. When we came inside from playing, he threw a fit, when we left the park, he threw a fit, when we went to the store, he threw a fit, when we went out to eat, he didn't eat. And then he threw a fit. The temperature didn't start dropping to a bearable 100 degrees until around 8:00 pm, so we would go out to play late. If we hadn't done that, they wouldn't have gone outside at all since the temps hovered around 110 during the day.

Linsey came over on Saturday and stayed the night. We went to church on Sunday and as we walked into the auditorium from class, Robert recognized where we were and he did an about face and headed in the opposite direction. That was my first clue that church wasn't going to go over well. Indeed it did not. I think we made it through a song or two before he was screeching and I was already tired from wrestling with him. He was being too loud for the cry room and trying to escape and it was too hot to be outside with him and I was exhausted from our week, so I put him in the car and drove around with him. He fell asleep within a few minutes. I went and got a sonic drink and sat in the church parking lot until church let out.

I figured that half hour power nap was just what he needed and so we headed over to Dairy Queen for lunch. I can't adequately describe how awful it was. It was completely packed and he was throwing one of his worst fits yet. I decided to get ours to go and told Clara we needed to go. Well, in dealing with Robert, I hadn't been clear on what to order, so I thought my mom was getting Clara a hotdog and she thought Clara was just eating some of mine. When her hotdog didn't come and then I abruptly said we were leaving, she broke down crying too because she wanted to stay with Bia. AHHHHHHH! To those of you reading this that bore witness to my very public display of inept parenting, I apologize :) Once I got him home, he was fine. That afternoon we took a few pics before Linsey drove back home but Robert and Brody wanted nothing to do with pictures. I decided not to attempt church that night and got packed to leave the next day.

After his outburst on Sunday, I was really afraid of how our drive home might go. The trip has the potential to be a very bad, very long day if Robert isn't happy. Thank goodness he was fantastic! He took a short morning nap, then we stopped for breakfast in Ozona. They have an indoor Sonic with a play place so the kids played for awhile. Robert went down the big slide that had what looked like almost a vertical drop to it. Yeah, he fell forward, hitting his forehead on the hard surface. I heard other, bigger kids saying "Ow!" as they came down the slide too, so I think it has a bit of a design flaw.

After he got over his bonked head and I was sure he was ok, we left. I made sure to give him Tylenol for the teeth and now the head. He fell asleep and ended up sleeping about three hours. I didn't have to stop until we got to the other side of San Antonio. I was giddy. It could not have been more perfect. I needed to stop for gas and lunch and was going to have to wake him but he woke up just as I was about to exit and at that same instant, the gas tank light lit up.

He was perfect for the last few hours and we pulled into the driveway exactly 10 hours after we left Pecos. There were some really happy kiddos when Daddy got home a little while later. Robert made a liar out of me when he was a perfect little angel all evening. That boy must have just wanted to be home something fierce.