Driving Home

This is kinda how I felt about our drive home. I was staring at a ~20 hour drive home (1260 miles or so) and a really sick kid. I wished the flying monkeys would come carry us home. Owen ended up with a nasty case of "swimmers ear" or an infection of his ear canal. I think he had a sore in his ear before we got there, cause he complained of his ear hurting one night on the drive out, but then he felt fine. And I think the lake water made his ear get truly infected. I would say that Owen does not do well with pain. He can tolerate some things, but there is a point at which he goes "over the edge". He gets super whiney, screams, can't sleep, etc. We put a warm rice bag (lentil-filled) over his sore ear, and that helped a lot, but it had to be re-heated every hour or less. We took him to an Urgent Treatment Center on Saturday, they gave him a prescription for abx but he really didn't start feeling better til later on Sunday. I had hoped to drive home on Sunday, but knew after a few hours of no sleep on Saturday night that it was not going to happen. Sunday night, I begged and pleaded with Owen to sleep. I yelled. I made him feel bad for being sick. I was so desperate for some sleep, any sleep, so that I could drive home the next day. I pleaded with him to just be quiet for 2 hours. Anything. I am pretty ashamed of how I treated Owen that night. But we both got through it, he doesn't hate me, I got enough sleep to drive the next day.

We drove straight through that first day. Owen still felt bad, but wasn't whiney or cry-y so we drove. We made great time, had time to get Thai takeout for dinner, watch some TV , and get a really good night's sleep. Owen only woke me up once that night :-)

The second day we took more time to get back. We stopped somewhere in Kansas and visited the Oz Museum. It was entertaining.

Elise got to meet Toto

We saw all the characters. The museum is the largest collection of Wizard of Oz paraphanalia, All sorts, including stuff from the books, plays, silent movies, toys, advertisements, etc.

Our entertainment for this version of the drive was again, books on tape/CD. We started out with Peter and the Starcatchers, by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson. It is the story of how Peter Pan got his start. It is a Disney story, but it is pretty well done. the kids really enjoyed it, and the insights into how some of the well-known items of the Peter Pan story came to be. It was 9 hours long! Apparently, it is a trilogy, and we will definitely be continuing with these, whether by reading or listening, not sure yet.

On our way out, we listened to Fudge-a-Mania, by Judy Blume. I enjoyed her books when I was a teenager, so gave Fudge-a-Mania a chance. The kids liked it (especially Fudge), and it seemed okay, so I decided to give a few more of her books a chance for this part of the trip. We got Double Fudge and Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing. Double Fudge was okay, but Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing was very difficult for me to listen to. I don't know if was the era in which this book was written, and her writing changed to reflect more current parenting styles (1972 vs 2002) or what, but I had to keep stopping the story to discuss what had just happened with my kids. There was a lot of parents being disrespectful to children, even physically, and language that was very different from how I speak with my kids, and how they speak with each other. It was bad enough that I had to stop the tape and ask, you know that's not how we (treat, speak to, interact with) others? Luckily, my kids mostly got it, and agreed that what had just happened should not have. Now, the story was still funny, and she has a good was of giving a voice to little kids, but still. I say skip Tales and listen to or read the later books. I'm pretty careful about what my kids are exposed to, so I was surprised to find so many disagreeable situations in that story.

Now that we are home, I am getting some well-needed sleep, and I'm letting my body detox from all of the Diet Coke and crunchy salty snacks I consumed over the past two days. And I am so looking forward to getting back into my excersize routine, Nia tomorrow!