Some of you may have remembered me writing about our vacation that we were planning. Well, it finally rolled around and let me just tell y’all, I have plenty of column material.
We had originally planned to leave last Friday afternoon. Aaron’s Mom, otherwise known as Gigi, was not able to get off work as early as we had planned so we decided to wait and leave Saturday morning. My mistake was that I did not change the countdown on the calendar that we had set up for Kiera to mark days off.
Thursday night right before bedtime, Kiera went to the calendar and marked off her day. She ran back into the living room where we were folding clothes. “Guess what?” She yelled excitedly. “We have 0 more days!”
I glanced at Aaron, realizing my mistake. “Well, baby… you see…” I began stumbling my words trying to figure out how to explain to my super excited child that we weren’t actually leaving for another day. “Gigi doesn’t get off work early, so we actually can’t leave until Saturday.”
Aaron chimed in, trying to help, “But, that’s ok because it gives us extra time to pack and get rested before we leave.”
“You don’t understand!” She fussed. “There’s 0 days!!”
I hugged her and we went to her bedroom to start our nighttime ritual. “Honey. Gigi can’t leave when we can. We need to wait for her. It’s all going to be ok.”
She climbed on her bed and crossed her arms. “Well, let’s leave Gigi!”
I explained that we could not leave Gigi and changed the subject by asking her what story she wanted for bedtime. I thought that was the end of the discussion. How wrong I was.
Kiera is not a morning person so we have a routine. She gets a short movie on the iPad and a glass of milk then time to veg before we start getting ready. Friday morning started the same. I woke her up and then went about my routine. In a short bit, I went back to her room to get her excited for the day.
I bounced into her room and sang, “It’s Friday! Today is your last day of school and tomorrow we go to California!” I even threw in a little dance with the song.
She sat up and leaned back on her elbows and said in a flat tone, “I do not care.”
Apparently she was not as impressed with my song and dance as I was.
She continued on. “Y’all do not understand! We have 0 days!”
“Honey. I already told you. We have to wait for Gigi.” I patiently explained.
She crossed her arms and looked me square in the eyes. “Look. It’s like this. We leave Gigi or I cry.”
I felt like I was a hostage negotiator. “Baby, Gigi wants to see her Mommy too.” I quietly explained. She dropped the subject and thankfully she finally came to terms with the fact that we were going to wait for Gigi and not leave until Saturday morning.
Saturday finally rolled around and we climbed in the van with my in-laws and set off for California. We left around 8:30 a.m. Kiera did great on the trip over. She only asked a couple of times if we were there yet. Oddly enough, she did not sleep that much. She took a very short nap on Saturday and we assumed she would pass smooth out when night fell.
We stopped at a restaurant for dinner around 6:30 Saturday night. We had made it into New Mexico by that time. As we walked into the restaurant, Kiera asked, “Are we living in a hotel tonight?”
I jokingly answered back, “No, baby. Tonight we are living in the car.” We were planning on driving straight through to California since we had four different drivers.
The server sat us at a table in the middle of the crowded restaurant. She asked us what we wanted to drink and left. Kiera turned to Gigi who was sitting across the table. “Guess what Gigi?” Before Gigi had a chance to respond, Kiera said loudly, “Tonight we are LIVING in our CAR!”
I’m fairly certain that might have echoed through the restaurant.
After finishing our dinner, we climbed back in the van and headed out. Pop decided to drive and Aaron and I would rest up for our turn. We settled Kiera in with a movie and he and I started to fall asleep. I woke forty-five minutes later to realize Kiera was not asleep. I waited until she finished the movie and turned it off, encouraging her to close her eyes and sleep.
It worked for a short time until she became car sick. She and I switched seats and we were off again. None of us really slept on the way over. We had a few catnaps. Kiera didn’t even sleep. I think through the whole trip down she might have slept 5 to 6 hours. Maybe. The total drive took us almost 32 hours.
About two hours before we reached our destination in California, the lack of sleep started to kick in on Kiera. It was interesting to say the least. While the rest of us looked like zombies, Kiera started to act as if we had fed her a constant diet of straight sugar.
She bounced in her seat, singing random songs, bounced her legs up and down, and spoke at close to 200 mph. It was… a little frightening… for us. Not her.
We finally reached Redding and headed straight for Grandma and Grandpa McNeely’s house. I was so proud of Kiera. She had never met her great-grandparents and she went right to them and hugged them.
It was wonderful to finally see them and to be out of the car. We sat around for a bit and visited before eating a huge meal that Grandma McNeely had prepared for us. During that time, Kiera’s crazy spell continued. She was very sweet and offered to help Grandma McNeely warm up the food but would randomly run to Aaron or I with off the wall remarks.
At one point, I looked at Grandpa McNeely and felt the need to assure him that she was not normally this way. I don’t think they would have cared either way. They were excited to see us.
We finally retired to our hotel where we took a long awaited shower and climbed into our comfortable beds. Kiera was asleep by 6:30 p.m. and Aaron and I were not far behind at 7:00 p.m. Now, before you snicker, let me remind you that in Texas it was actually two hours later.
The next morning, as we drove over to Grandma and Grandpa McNeely’s house, Aaron began to explain to Kiera a little of his history in Redding.
“I was born in this town.” He told her. “Pop was born here too. And when Gigi and Pop had me, they lived in Grandpa and Grandma McNeely’s house. That’s where I lived when I was a baby.”
There was a moment of silence as she processed that information. Then she said, “Wait… Grandma McNeely used to be your mom?”
The last few days have been great fun and we are looking forward to more fun times this week. Stay tuned for next week’s column when I talk about traveling with an OCD child. Think about that little tidbit for a few minutes.
I want to take a moment and give a special thanks to our dog and house sitters! Thank you for taking care of our babies while we are away.
Have a great week everyone!
Rowonna McNeely is a graphic artist for Willie’s T’s Screenprint & Embroidery. She is a mother of a five year old girl and step mother of two adult girls. Her crazy life includes a dog, Sloane and psychotic cat, Gracie. Both females. She is married to her prince, who is outnumbered by the opposite gender.
