Didn't I Feed You Yesterday__ A Mother's Guide to Sanity in Stilettos - Laura Bennett [65]
I hated it. But I tried not to show it. I strapped on my lowest-heel espadrilles and gamely herded the boys off the boat and onto the shore, overriding their lazy complaints about how they just wanted to stay by the pool and make more ice cream and sodas—maybe even ice cream floats! What might chocolate and Sprite taste like together? They had to know! Luckily, there was more free food on the beach, and even an actual bar with actual booze so I could wrap a warm fuzzy blanket of alcohol around my mouse-numbed brain.
The last day I did try to get all the kids to go to mousetivities, but by the afternoon we were all back by the pool, once again being regaled with looping Disney cartoons on the JumboTron (or was that DumboTron? It honestly might have been) overhead. Children with lesser fortitude might have caved, but after three days mine had had enough magic and dreams come true. “Mom, I want to go home,” Pierson said, drawing a tear of pride from my eye.
Once off the ship at eight A.M., we were all raring to get those two plane trips out of the way and be back home in time for an early dinner and a couple of episodes of The Simpsons. Our flight from Orlando arrived in Atlanta just in time to connect to the 2:40 flight to La Guardia. Make that 3:45. Oh, we meant 4:40. Well, maybe 6:15. Actually, it was looking more like 7:30. Cleo was already back in Houston, and I was again kicking myself that I hadn’t made her suffer this part of the trip by my side. The delays were accompanied by a game of musical gates, some which required a tram ride to another terminal, all of which required me to break camp and move the three caballeros along. A toddler, much like a puppy, can only be expected to stay cooped up for a limited amount of time. I had to let Finn out of his restraints every now and then, which would result in him running in circles around whichever gate we were temporarily at, hugging strangers’ legs, and sipping from untended straws. Pierson and Larson, long over being entertained by airport snacks and the dwindling contents of our activity bag, spent their time wrestling, playing chase, and fighting to the death over a one-and-a-half-inch Lego figure of the Incredible Hulk. Why I didn’t bring a DVD player along for each boy will remain one of the great mysteries of the modern world. Had I thought they would have enough mind-numbing images on board the ship? Had I thought that traveling with my kids should be a time of fun and old-fashioned games? Had I been smoking crack when I planned this? Who knows? But it will never happen again.
We finally boarded at seven, then sat on the runway for forty minutes. Somehow the shuffling around had resulted in the four of us being upgraded to first class. The extra leg room was nice, but first-class passengers have a heightened level of expectations and no one wanted to be in the vicinity of two exhausted, whining boys and a toddler with poop in his diaper.
Shortly after takeoff, the exhausted boys all fell asleep, and I was able to enjoy a quiet meal of airplane food, which is exactly the quality of food to which I had grown accustomed. The angelic faces around me were certainly a blessing, at least until they became a curse as I tried to get them all and our luggage from La Guardia to Manhattan at eleven P.M.
However I did it, I was pleased to put them all to bed that night in a mouse-free environment—no origami-animal-shaped towels, no mouse chocolates on the pillows. I still had two days to go until the big boys returned from the dude ranch, but who cared, really? I had survived a vacation with four of my children, and now I never had to do that again. Or at least not until Fox makes a cruise on which Lois and Petah are at the captain’s table, seated next to Marge and Homer, and Finn can run wild with the likes of Maggie, Stewie, and Brian. Perhaps I’ll send Peter on that cruise with the kids. I will stay here in New York and go on my own safari to bag the big five: Bergdorf’s, Bloomingdale’s, Barneys, Bendel’s, and Saks.
“I grabbed the extinguisher and pointed it at