The Little Vacation That Could(n't, Did)

On Friday Eric and I decided to take an impromptu trip downtown with the little guys. The Marriott had great rates and we could get 5000 bonus points while enjoying our skyline view of the city from our 38th floor windows, so why not, right? The plan was to leave right after Eric got off of work at 4:30. We made reservations at the Buca by the hotel for 5:45. But, true to form, Brendan decided to take a very short nap, after which he came downstairs and fell asleep at 4:20. Liam, who doesn't take a nap anymore, took a nap at 3:30. Eric and I tried to quickly pack up our two backpacks without forgetting any of the many things we would probably forget, and then we woke up the boys. Liam was an utter wreck. Really. I can sympathize, because I often feel like that after naps, but I think I deal with it better. By the time we got out the door it was 5:00. When we were still waiting to get through the Cumberland toll at 5:45 we changed the reservation to 6:30. When we weren't even at Irving Park Road by 6:15 we called and canceled the reservation and tried to think of somewhere we could go off the expressway. Did I mention we are trying to have the boys in bed and asleep by 8:30? Eric thought of a few places but I wanted to get further into the city. An exit or two before Nagle Brendan really wanted to get out of the car (where we'd been for an hour and a half.) We offered fruit snacks and Liam was in but Brendan said no. Brendan never says no to fruit snacks. Soon we found out why, because about 30 seconds later he starting throwing up all over. Awesome! Apparently he is unused to driving in stop and go traffic and he got car sick. Boy did he ever. The same thing happened to Liam when he was about Brendan's age and I was going into the city at about the same time of day to meet up with some AmeriCorps friends. I forgot about the traffic, but that didn't help at this point. Anyway, there was no way we could clean Brendan off and put him back in the car seat, which along with his clothes took the brunt of the disaster. So we pulled off at Nagle, took all his clothes off (fortunately he was not wearing his coat - thank you God!) and washed him off (yes, it was 30 degrees), took the clothes and the car seat to some alley trash area, and I sat in the back with Brendan on my lap while we went to the Addison Target and bought a booster seat for Liam. Crisis averted. By the time we got downtown at 7:40 we were still able to get right in to Buca, and then we went back to the hotel, explored a little, skipped the pool and went back to our room. Brendan fell asleep relatively easily because Eric and I were there and he was tired. Eric and I decided to watch tv and Liam decided to join us. Late night tv is not appropriate for 4 year olds, but Liam really loved Conan. I'm with him. Conan's way better than Jay Leno, and I'm glad Liam has such good taste. He laughed at all the right places even though he had no idea what they were talking about. I fell asleep during Craig Ferguson (who in my humble opinion is the absolute best talk show host beside Johnny Carson, hands down), which may seem like a sort of dull vacation, but for me and Eric it was blissful. We almost never get to watch tv and almost never get to fall asleep when we want to. The next morning we woke up, went to breakfast, went to the pool, picked up some delicious Thai from Lincoln Square, picked up Liam's bday party cake for his kids' birthday party tomorrow, and got home by 2:30. I'm so happy we decided to chuck the car seat and go on with the trip. It might seem wasteful but actually that car seat was almost at the end of it's life as it was, so it would have been gone soon anyway. We were most disappointed about the cool pants Brendan had on, but we had no where to keep them until we went home the next day, so c'est la vie. Oh, and Liam and Brendan were both amazing in the pool and they met a friend, Megan, who Liam wanted to invite back to our room. I don't know if it's preschool or what but he's really coming out of his shell a lot more, and Brendan has been getting all shy and clingly. So I guess these are all just stages. And so too hopefully is Brendan's dreadful dreadful sleep. Hopefully next week we'll have some better game plan for that. But for right now we just have Liam's final 4th birthday party tomorrow. Who thinks I'll remember to bring the camera?

There Were Five in the Bed

On Saturday Eric and I went for the big ultrasound reveal. Liam and Brendan were at their grandparents' and we had a whole late morning and afternoon to ourselves, which is a seemingly very, very painfully rare event lately. The ultrasound went well, the baby looked good, and apparently looked like a boy. I was surprised, because I thought he was a girl, but if there's one thing I've learned about being a mom it's that kids never ever do what you expect them to. After the appointment we got massages, and then, instead of doing even one of the 6.12 million things we were planning on doing, we just drove to a random Indian restaurant on Devon and had a delicious lunch. Because we could. I still ate it about twice as fast as I needed to, being so unused to getting to sit down and eat slowly and relax and enjoy my meal, but mmmm.
For about the last two months Brendan has been sleeping so badly through the night that he now wakes up Liam, who then has a hard time getting back to sleep because of the hypothetical monsters that he knows probably don't exist but still possibly might. It's been brutal, I'm not going to lie. We have tried pretty much everything you could think of, and nothing has worked. So today, after an incredibly stressful, no good horrible awful night last night, we are going to try and enlist the help of a pediatric sleep specialist. I have about 5% hope for a positive solution, but after more than 2 years and 3 months where we've only gotten maybe, maybe 10 full nights of sleep, I'm out of ideas.
On a more positive note Brendan and Liam surprise and astound me every day with how freaking funny and smart they are, and how good they can now play with each other (well and fight too, which is a wholly new concept to me having never had a sibling anywhere near my own age, but apparently it's normal though I still hate it and constantly try and crush it out. It's not bad but I just want them to never fight, which seems perfectly reasonable to me.) Both of them are sharp as tacks and are phenomenally good talkers, so I just love to sit back and listen to their conversations. Liam had set the bar so high with his verbal skills I really didn't expect Brendan to match up to him, but there again I was so wrong. And he is actually a much clearer talker, but to my great surprise, similar to Liam, he will not perform on command, will usually not continue to do what he's doing if I get out the camera, and often quiets down when we go out in public. Not always, but a lot. So I guess some Eric genes did make it into him after all.
Last week we finally started getting our basement finished. We are very very excited about this, even though it's a pretty small basement, but having another room in the house is becoming increasingly important. I really want to leave some of the brick exposed down there, which we're not planning on doing right now, but aside from that it's the coolest thing to walk down in what had always been the dungeon and see it transforming into a cool place. After that the only other renovation we have left for the main house is the upstairs bathroom. Of course once we complete that, if we stay in this house, we will then need to think about the plans for an addition. And I say, why not sink more money into a place that depreciates a little more each day? What's there to lose? I mean, beside our house and all our money and everything but the clothes on our back, right? This is America, for God's sake!
I have recently discovered that overall I have a pretty idyllic life, which is a good thing to realize every now and then. You really can't beat having a husband/Dad who works from home, a wife/Mom who works part time 5 blocks away, two terribly-sleeping but otherwise ideal sons who make even winter a ton of fun, and a house with something changing every day. Now, if I could somehow just manage to schedule one of those prenatal massages into my week EVERY week...