Home, or What to do when the universe conspires against you whilst on "vacation" in Michigan.

If you’re still 23 miles from the next service station when your 3-month old’s crying fit hits full throttle, rather than pull off to feed him, be relentless about duping him into thinking the binky is a breast. Sooner or later he’ll either fall for it or tire of being stubborn. Just don’t expect this to work on the return trip; he’ll have wised up by then.

When your toddler wanders into your room early one morning and loudly declares, “I’m all wet! My bed’s all wet, too!” such that the baby’s sleep is threatened, remove the faulty diaper, drag him into your bed and convince him to go back to sleep. Tell him the ambient sounds he's hearing are just figments of his imagination: the neighbor’s barking beagles, the bird (birds?) whose calls are either mating ritual and mind-numbing lament, the planes whose flight paths are conveniently diverted to the area for the day…when this fails and your toddler begs to get out, tell HIM to go make the morning coffee.

When your dog loses control of his bowels in a BIG way on your parents’ carpet at 5am, stop nursing the baby immediately and shove said dog out the door where any remaining damage can be done. Calmly proceed to gather the necessary cleaning supplies (don’t forget the gloves!) and scrub the floor for the next hour and a half. You won’t do the job the way Stanley Steamer would, but you’ll feel better knowing you gave it your best. In the next two days your parents will each take a stab at scrubbing up, only to call the professional cleaners in the end. At some point be sure to finish feeding the baby—he doesn’t appreciate a meal interrupted.

Tired of listening to your 2 ½ year old whining that he doesn’t get the same food or treatment given to his much younger cousin? Then have a little fun with him. When your niece is offered yogurt and HE, too, demands it (“No, I want some yogurt!”), say to your niece, “Would you like human remains? How about some roadkill?” to which your son will reply, “No, I want remains…I want roadkill.” At the least this is good for a laugh between sleep-deprived parents at 7 a.m. (nice one, Jane!).

At 2 a.m. your newborn, already suffering through his second cold, projectile-spits up on your parents’ bed (the one they’ve kindly given up for the week) and you (such that you're sitting in a small pool of it). Grab a bath towel or two to protect the mattress and yourself from contact (this will hopefully muffle the smell as well), and call it a night. Be sure to position the towels properly, since it’s more than likely your toddler will wet the bed anyway when he crawls in with you a few hours later.

If ants mysteriously appear in your diaper bag (this on the same morning you cleaned up after your dog--or was it your baby?), don’t panic. Simply throw out all the sponge bob fruit snacks, sterilize the binkies, and give the bag a good shaking. Leave it outside for the day so that any remaining invaders can find their way back “home.” If, when you check the bag for lingerers a few hours later you find one or two, forget your inner Buddhist and crush them.

Road Trip, Part One.

You know you need to get out of town and on the road for your long trip home, but your timing isn’t quite right. Do you still do it, or wait 'til the morning to start fresh, having had a good night’s sleep--maybe avoid rush hour traffic and a crying baby (who HATES to be in a stationary vehicle)?

This was the question facing us at 4pm on a Thursday just before we headed to Michigan a few weeks back, and well, either our genius failed us, or we thumbed our noses at logic and packed the kids and the dog in the car anyway. First, we stopped at the bank to sign our power-of-attorney forms, since we’d be closing on the house in absentia. The frenetic little banker inside, who reminded each of us more than once just how much of a rush he was in, was the first sign of things to come. This was accompanied and/or followed by:


• The drive from Somerville to the Pike, normally a 15-20 minute endeavor, which took over an hour.
• The unrelenting sun, which I swear beat mercilessly down on us until 8 or 9pm, when our black dog had nearly melted in the hatchback.
• Surly parents (read: not speaking to each other at one point) and very crabby children—understandably so—one who relies on the motion of the car to be lulled to sleep, the other who cannot bear to hear his brother crying (“Mommy, you feed him NOW.” [of course this was physically impossible from the front seat of the car]) and so began a feigned wailing of his own.
• Traffic and construction speed limits once we hit the Pike, which put us just 2 ½ hours away from home after 7 hours on the road.*

*Did I mention that our A/C works sporadically at best these days and our car doesn't exactly accommodate 4 people and a large dog, plus all their gear (think essential baby gear that must be transported since grandma will not have an equivalent back in Michigan), without protest?

So, we crashed in Albany, New York—having successfully smuggled the dog into the not-so-pet-friendly hotel—and agreed to start fresh early the next morning. What time did we actually resume our travel? A much later 11 a.m., but after a healthy breakfast, no less!