4 Days and Counting...

As I write this I am drinking red wine out of a tumbler because I gave away our crummy wine glasses and I won't feel like washing a Reidel tomorrow....oh, and we're out of beer....

I am simultaneously feeling like the best and worst dad in the world tonight. The best because it took every parenting trick I have learned over the last 2 years and 3 months to get both boys in bed by 9:30....the worst because neither of them took baths, Sam ate only noodle wheels and milk for dinner and nothing else (no veg, no protein, just white carbs) and Sam went to bed in the same shirt he wore all afternoon and no pjs. Best or worst? You decide... The best because Sam hasn't thrown up yet and I thought for sure he was going to when he got a boogie in his mouth 5 minutes before bedtime. If he had, there was no way I was going to get up in time and it would have gone all over himself, his blankie, me, Peter and the leather chair we read books in. It would have been a disaster, but with his head on my shoulder, me stroking his hair, patting his back, sopping up his tears with blankie we somehow avoided catastrophe. Best or worst dad? You vote... :)

We pack-out in 4 days and it doesn't seem possible that we will get all that we need to do done in time. But I know somehow we will. I can't wait to get on the road. To be pulled over on 95 in a rest stop with our only worry making sure Peter is fed and Sam can run and it not mattering what time we check into the hotel room. One would think that the actual travel would be the hard part, but the actual travel will seem tame in comparison to the preparation to travel and will be welcomed.

And I'm not even the one who still has four photo shoots to edit.

I've started talking to Sam more in the last few days. Not that I don't talk to him, but I talk to him about what's happening and what will happen...Elise and I both, probably less for Sam and more for ourselves. We talk to him about Easter and Jesus and the Easter Bunny, something to look to beyond everything else. I found Fisher Price roller blades on an 11:00 p.m. run to Walmart and I can't wait to get them for him for Easter. His favorite sport during the Olympics was short track ice skating (Apolo Anton Ohno's sport) and he calls it (and all winter sports, really, bobsled and snow skiing included) "Zoom!".

I don't exactly know what to tell him about Jesus yet. Elise laughed when I started my Easter talk by telling Sam Jesus was a nice guy and the Easter Bunny brings us one present because of this (I'm paraphrasing). I didn't feel it necessary, at the time, to delve into dying on the cross for our sins, reincarnation, rolling back rocks, etc. I think it is enough to know, for now, that he was a nice guy and that if he is a nice guy too he gets to have one present on Easter morning along with a basketful of astro grass and jellybeans and if he is a really nice guy (or boy) that present will be roller blades with plastic wheels and wheel locks. I was already joking that Sam was going to be rocketing up and down the halls of our new apartment building.

4 days left and we had one of our most seminal moments yet as a family when we locked the keys in the car after having our fanily pictures taken. The park had closed and the ranger had come by to let us know he was closing the gate. There were the four of us, huddled in blankets and jackets to keep the mosquitos away, waiting for our savior in a white Mini Cooper to bring the spare car key. Peacocks (yes, peacocks!) were crying in the dark. There was nothing we could do, but hunker down and be a family.