Our Life Together

We Are Crazy

"I'm going to hurt them, Brad." I glare over at him, trying to restrain from strangling my children "This is the 3rd time they freaking woke her."

"Boys," he looks through the mirror back at them "Stop waking your sister! She's just going to keep crying."

"But dad this is so boring!" Liam complains "We should take an airplane.  We're rich."

"Yeah, daddy." Jack adds starting to unbuckle himself "I want out!"

"Jackson Carter! If you get out of that seat you will not do ANYTHING when we get there." I turn around to see that he already has his arms out and is making faces at me "You have 10 seconds to get yourself back in there or daddy's pulling over and he'll put you back in." He starts to cry and complain about everything, but get himself buckled again and eventually falls asleep.  The only problem now is that Olivia is still upset about God only knows what.

"You gotta get her." Brad finally pulls over "I can't keep listening to her scream like that."

I get out and pick up Olivia immediately.  She stops crying as soon as she isn't sitting anyone which tells me she needs changed.  I get this sick feeling in my stomach that we forgot a very important bag.  The one bag that we need the most.

"Brad?" I ask "Where is her diaper bag?"

He thinks for a while before his eyes get huge "... on the kitchen table." Great.  We're in the middle of freaking nowhere on the side of the road.  She needs changed desperately and we have nothing.  No diapers, no wipes.  Nothing.  We can't even put her back down for a few minutes until we get to a store because she's too uncomfortable.

"Shit." I walk around trying to think of what we can do.  We can't put her back in her seat because she'll scream and wake up the boys who are now sleeping, but we can't drive without her in it either.

"What do we do now?" Brad asks taking her "Don't you have anything in your purse?  We can stop at a store when we see one."

"No.  I put everything in that bag so I wouldn't lose it." I hand Liv my keys to play with and she hits the button to open the trunk. 

Brad and I both look at each other knowingly.  We always keep a bag with a diaper and wipes in the trunk because we're idiots and do things like this.

He quickly opens the little bag only to see that it's still filled with stuff from Jackson.  I must have forgot to make one for her.  She continues to play with my keys, somehow turning the car alarm on before I finally take them from her.

"Well, it's a little big, but it can work." He holds up a diaper "It's better than nothing." I agree with him so he changes her quickly while I grab some snacks.  I've learned the hard way that they really help keep the boys quiet in the car.

After everything is settled, we start to drive again.  This time, I'm driving so that Brad can get a little break.  We talk for a little, and even listen to Liv "talk" to us until they both eventually fall asleep and I'm the only one awake.  I'm half tempted to just pull over and get some sleep myself, but that's not gonna help anything.

An hour later, after I've already stopped at the store to pick up what we needed, the boys are awake again. Brad and Olivia are amazingly still sleeping.  They stay quiet and eat their snacks while watching a movie.

"Mom," Gabe asks "How long until we get there?"

"About an hour.  It won't be too long." I hear them all get excited and laugh. We've been in the car 6 hours, and that's more than enough to make us crazy.

Brad and Olivia both wake up a few minutes later and we run into another problem. She is hungry, and since we left the diaper bag at home, I have to feed her unless she's eating snacks.

"Liam can you give her some of her puff things?" I ask "We'll be there soon and then I can feed her.  I don't want to pull over right now.

We finally make it to our hotel, which is right next to the Grand Canyon, and practically jump out of the car.  I stay with the boys and feed Liv quickly while Brad gets us checked in.

They run around the whole room playing random games and making me want to shove them all back in the car.  I would go crazy if Brad wasn't here to help.

"Let's go to our room before you guys get us kicked out." He walks over and takes Olivia from me.

"So what are we doing today?" Liam asks "I'm bored."

"We can go swimming or something." I answer him "We won't have enough time to see the canyon today."

"I hope it's not a crappy pool." He says right in front of employees.

"William! Seriously?" I glare at him "You gotta say that stuff in private."

"Let's go!" Jack pulls me in the direction of our room clearly annoyed at how slow we're walking.

We get to our room and change as quickly as we can.  I put Olivia in the cutest little bathing suit ever while Brad makes sure Jack actually has his on right.

After everyone is ready we practically run down to the pool. The boys jump in right away and start to play with some other kids there.  They all play a game together so Brad and I stay with Olivia.

"At least she's having fun here."  He holds her up in the water "Even if they just complain we can remember how cute she is smiling like this."

"If I would have known she'd be the only happy one I would have left them with my parents."  I watch as Jack walks over to us.

"I go home, mommy."