Remember yesterday when I told you about Nate’s newfound chattiness? Yesterday was also the day I tried to pack up our group of six for six days at Disneyland. But, oh, my goodness, with the chattiness. You’d think the three other chatty kids would have worn me down and given me the skillz to handle constant chatting.
You would think that, but you would be underestimating how Nate can start one sentence early in the morning and just not stop talking all day. When our children are sullen thirteen, sixteen, sixteen, and nineteen year olds, I vow now to follow them around chatting endlessly. Just so they can understand some questions (“Mommy. Why don’t dogs kiss on the lips?”) really have no answer. Asking the question three (or three hundred times) doesn’t make an answer.
I plan to really do this if my future teen are, let’s say, struggling to figure out how to bring the necessities for a family of six to have the TIME OF THEIR LIVES at Disneyland. Double especially if they’re trying to figure out how to transport car seats and diapers and princess dresses without the airlines asking us to leave one child for payment.
( I realize it would be weird if my future teenage kids were trying to to transport diapers across the country. Just to clarify, I really hope that’s never a scenario we’re dealing with.)
Anyway, I know I’m not alone as a mama struggling to pack for a REALLY FUN TRIP!! when the real fun trip participants are running around underfoot packing their suitcases full of fruit snacks and stuffed animals.
I’m pretty sure every mama in the history of time understands my frustration. When Eve was trying to pack up and sojourn to look for more fertile land, she probably told Cain and Abel to “JUST GO OUT IN THE FIELD AND PLAY!”
Well. We all know how that turned out.
Pictured above is my strategy of filling the kids’ suitcases with Mickey Mouse t-shirts and Ariel dresses (instead of the American Girl dolls they’d like to bring). I sent Nate outside with a bowl of fruit salad and scrambled to pack as much as I could while he munched and chatted with the dogs. Brilliant. Not only was his mouth otherwise occupied, the dog was too, and neither were underfoot.
So, wish me luck! We are soon off for the land of Mickey and Minnie and roller coasters that make me puke!
(And just in case you’re planning to rob our house of all the stuffed animals and fruit snacks we’re leaving behind, I’d like you to know our house is well-protected with some serious grandparents. And one ferocious dog…who loves fruit salad.)
