there's this restaurant on the way to the beach and it's next to a gas station that we sometimes stop at. anyways, i kid you not, the name of the restaurant is "stucky's" and even though christopher and i have never eaten there, we mention "stucky" and "stucky's" at all possible opportunities.
anyways. i've been bad at posting but part of the reason is that i'll post a bunch of pictures from my phone using the blogger app... with the intention of editing it and adding commentary when i get on my laptop and have a real keyboard and a decent size screen. but sometimes the blogger app takes DAYS to publish the post. like right now i have three posts that i've written in the past few days but none will publish. so it looks like i've been MIA since friday. not really the case. just slightly frustrating.
speaking of frustrating? yesterday was terribly frustrating. starting with the fact that i didn't go to sleep monday night because i was up late packing and then just stayed up because i had to be up by 3am anyways to leave the house by 4 for our 6am flight. so i had been awake since 7am monday morning. tuesday i got to the airport and since i hadn't added brady as "infant on lap" then i had to wait in this insanely long line at check in for a new boarding pass even though i already had them printed. and i had to drag SO MUCH STUFF AND TWO CARSEATS AND TWO KIDS through that line. i can't even tell you how many comments i got from people and the phrase of choice was "bless you" and "you're brave." and then i ran to security and it wasn't terribly bad except that i was frazzled knowing it was likely i would miss my flight (which would suck because christopher was on his way to a meeting so i would have been stranded at the airport with two kids) and it takes airport security forever to check all of our bottles of liquid (we had four) and believe me that abigail's carseat will not fit through the security belt no matter how you try to maneuver it and recline it and twist it and turn it. and then we had to use elevators any time we needed to go downstairs because i had so much baggage and helping abigail onto an escalator too and trying to not smash brady who was strapped to me in a wrap. we were literally RUNNING through the airport. one hand was pulling a carryon with my purse on top and abigail's carseat hitched on the back and my other hand was holding abigail's and poor brady was just bobbing up and down trying keep his neck from snapping in half. as we got within earshot of our gate i heard someone on the intercom yelling "if you are on the flight to atlanta you need to RUN!" ironic because i was running and i kid you not, i literally yelled out "WE'RE RUNNING!!! WE'RE RUNNING!!!" i'm sure we weren't a spectacle at all. the flight was at 6:00 and the boarding pass said they close the doors at 5:50. we got there at 5:52. seriously BARELY made it. i walked on that plane extremely grateful. and equal parts sweaty.
what else wasn't going my way? oh, my two year old has been pumped to ride on an airplane and that's all she's talked about for the past five days. we get on the plane and....? she has a window seat that has no window. and the seat in front of her had their window completely shut. and i brought absolutely nothing for her to play with (that's another story not worth telling) but luckily she was an angel and just sat there like "okay, here i am. i'm just going to sit here because apparently i'm on an airplane and this is supposed to be cool." totally just going with it. she was also super awesome that she didn't kick the seat in front of her like she did the ENTIRE flight that we took in september for em's wedding.
brady only slept for maybe... MAYBE 20 minutes of the 2.5 hour flight. he didn't have any screaming fits but he required constant playing with and was just squirmy.
our flight landed early! yeay! at 10:40 atlanta time i texted mom to let her know we landed.
abigail wanted to use a bathroom stall that literally could not fit us and our bags and the ONE handicap stall was locked with no one in it so we had to go to a different bathroom entirely. she screamed and cried some jibberish about "potty" all the way through C terminal until we got to another bathroom and then she threw herself on the floor to continue that fit because it wasn't the "all the way green potty" like she wanted and then because she couldn't open the locked closet door in the handicap stall to go potty in there. eventually that ended and she went potty and we continued on to baggage claim but by that point i had talked to mom and told her "actually, would you mind parking the car and coming in to help me get our bags from the carousel and everything? i don't have enough hands" SMART MOVE because while my bags came right away, brady's checked carseat did not.
after a million trips and waiting around and talking to more people that i could keep track of, i finally had to fill out a missing baggage form and borrow a loaner carseat from the airport. it was ghetto and annoying. that whole process took forever and TWO HOURS after we landed, we finally drove away from the airport.
the varsity was amazing as usual. of course. although brady tasted an onion ring and cried about it.
all day i was so tired i wasn't making sense or able to keep going on a single train of thought and i kept falling asleep and nodding off every two seconds. abigail fell asleep for her nap right away but brady wasn't going down for a nap no matter how hard i tried. i was about to die so i passed him off to my mom and passed out on her bed for a long time. apparently she tried unsuccessfully to wake me a few times and at 5 or so finally said "brady is so tired and has been awake forever. he NEEDS to go to sleep." so i somewhat remember swaddling him and putting him to sleep. very hazy on that though. and then i went back to sleep myself.
i can't even remember much of the day after that. abigail napped until 6 30 or so, we made a small batch of milkyway ice cream, sarah came to hang out with us for a bit when she dropped by a pack n play for us to borrow. i was still nodding off like crazy and at 10 30, everyone said goodnight and i was headed up to bed when i got a call from an unknown atlanta number and talked to some guy with an accent so thick i literally could only understand three words of the entire conversation. "baggage" and "leaving airport" and he did say yes when i said "you have my carseat?! are you coming to my house with it right now?!" at midnight he still wasn't here and i was tired of waiting. i called him. we had another conversation where i had no idea what he was saying except i heard something that indicated that he had two more stops to go before me but while i was asking him how much longer it would take, he hung up and the call disconnected. awesome. he came at 1:30. this is over 40 hours that have passed and all i've had is a disjointed nap of maybe two hours.
and while my carseat looked fine, the bag it was in was completely thrashed. awesome again. i wanted to ask the guy for details on where it was and why it was lost but seriously i could not understand a single thing he was saying. i signed something and gave him the loaner carseat and that was it.
i got to bed at 2.
brady woke up at 2 40 and didn't want to go to bed. and then he woke up an hour after that and maybe again an hour after that and then for the day at 10. thankfully abigail slept in til 10 30.
today we left at 11 30 and went to the atlanta botanical gardens. the exhibit they have going on right now is phenomenal. i loved it and will post pictures soon. we ran errands and got home at 6. brady fought nap and then woke up 45 minutes later. and then when i put him down for the night it took 30 minutes of fighting with him and he was up 45 minutes later again and wouldn't go back to sleep. and then i finally got him down at 11:30, with crying from him. and then showering, pumping, emptying my brain.
so cheers for another 2am bedtime! let's cross our fingers brady gets back on track with this whole sleep thing and starts being happier when he's awake too!
i'm so excited for tomorrow... i just need to get some sleep so i can enjoy it!
