so we went home to southern illinois for a weekend. it’s a 5-hour drive, give or take. not a hell of a lot of fun with 4 kids, but we manage well enough; we’ve got a pretty good system of entertainment, rules and pitstops that we’ve worked out over the years. EG is great in the car – hell when he was 4-1/2, we drove TWO DAYS, 12+ hours a day, to the beach in NC, and he was FINE the whole trip. no shit! the twins? not so much. around the 2-hour mark, they get antsy. by the 4-hour mark, SM is crying, and issuing a non-stop monologue that goes a little something like this: I DON’T WANT TO BE IN THE CAR ANYMORE WE HAVE TO STOP I WANNA GET OUT I’M TIRED MY BUTT HURTS I CAN’T FEEL MY LEGS THIS SUUUUUUUUCKS I WANNA GO HOME STOP THE CAR PLEEEEEASE AAAAAAAAAHHHH! in the meantime, DQ is quietly trying to chew through his 5-point restraints.
then there’s MB. he’s always been better-than-average in the car for a kid his age. other than the fact that he doesn’t sleep in the car. at all. ever. most toddlers will conk out and stay that way, especially if you’re in the car at naptime or past bedtime. not this kid. we’ve tried starting this drive at 7 PM, thinking he (like all his brothers before him) would fall asleep and stay that way until we arrived home at 1 AM. nope! he dozed for 20 minutes, then made noises to amuse himself for a couple of hours, then alternately stared blankly out the window and bitched for the last couple of hours. and this was at 18 months.
so, at 2-1/2, he’s really pretty good. for the first four hours. which is awesome! but that last hour’s pretty rough.
remember this later: as we were packing up the car, i handed MB a sucker, and he smacked that all over his damn face while riding up and down the driveway and playing in the front yard. when i later went to round up the kids to get them strapped in, i asked PRM where MB was. his answer was “CrapFace? he’s strapped in already.” i looked to find a beaming MB, dirt and blankie-fuzz stuck to his cheeks with cherry sucker-glue. it was pretty funny…
so on this trip, we stopped at mcdonald’s at the 3-hour mark. they got out and played at the nasty playplace, ate chicken mcnuggets, and dragged their spongebob toys back to the car… where MB stopped dead and refused to get in. i quickly made a big show of dumping most of my vanilla shake into his half-empty sippy cup of eggnog. “ANGNONG EYESS CWEEM?” his eyes got big, he grabbed the cup, and hopped into his chair. win!
until 30 minutes later, when he started crying. inconsolably. it escalated to tearing-up-my-throat screams… and then hushed into ominous hiccups.
with the lewis and clark bridge over the mississippi river – our “YES, WE’RE THERE!” landmark – 20 minutes away, i turned around just in time to see the mushroom cloud eject from the boy’s horrified face. i mean, literally, MUSHROOM CLOUD. imagine this:
made out of eggnog ice cream. coming out of monkeybeef’s face.
it was so massive that there was no room for any sound to escape with it. the other three kids didn’t even notice it. PRM noticed it. because it hit his headrest. and splattered. there was a moment of silence, first broken by MB’s tremulous, horrified voice.
MB: POEWOE? ANGNONG POEWOE?
me: he just called it an eggnog pillow.
PRM: was that what i think it was? *already rolling down the window, since he already knows the answer*
MB: OOOOOH NOOOOOO!
me: yep.
PRM looked in the rearview mirror, to see MB covered from his chin down in chunky eggnog pillow mess. COVERED. sitting in a puddle of it. a freaking pond of it in the deep rubber floormat beneath him.
PRM: crapface.
PRM started laughing. this quickly turned into both of us laughing so hard we couldn’t talk. we rolled down the windows. PRM tried not to throw up from the smell. EG bitched at us for laughing at MB. MB cried. the twits freaked. we laughed uncontrollably til we hit my parents’ driveway, where the older three kids flew out of the van the second it stopped, and PRM and i unhooked MB’s carseat, complete with MB, GreenBankie, and the steaming eggnog pillow, and took it straight upstairs to the bathtub.
and you think that was fun? wait for part two!
