Home for the holidays

Last Wednesday I was starting to compose some comments on my last post when all of the sudden John comes limping into the room hyperventilating. It turns out he went outside to get the mail at 9pm and noticed that our neighbor had his sprinklers running. This might be a "yeah, so?" moment, but considering (1) it was 9pm at night, (2) it was about 30-something degrees outside and dropping, and (3) it was Wednesday and with the current water restrictions our neighborhood can only water lawns on Mondays, John was looking at the neighbor's yard all like "WTF?!" instead of looking where he was going and he stepped off the sidewalk in just the right position to feel a loud SNAP in his foot and end up on his hands and knees in the street.

So once we got him warmed up, and got his foot wrapped in ice and elevated, we agreed that I would take the morning off work to help get him crutches and whatever else he was going to need in the morning. Come Thursday morning, with John unable to bear any weight on his foot, it became apparent that he was not going to be able to take care of SchmoopyBaby unassisted, so I took the rest of the day off.

Now, we had been planning for a few weeks to visit my family in California for the holidays this weekend, and I had already arranged to take Friday and Monday off already. So, given that I was taking Thursday off as well, and as much as I hate to "waste" a vacation day, we decided to leave a day early.

It was kind of a stressful morning running around. I had to go to 4 places before I could find a set of crutches the right size, SchmoopyBaby was cranky about having his morning routine thrown for a loop and being forced in and out of the carseat a bunch of times, and John wasn't much help (understandably so) with packing for our trip.

We finally got to my parent's house on Thursday evening, later than we would have liked, but not too bad considering we weren't even planning on leaving for another day. Between the stress of taking care of 2 "babies" and the dog as well as the whole "home for the holidays" business with a family of average dysfunction, I was a little on edge the first couple of days and couldn't help but fall back into my old pattern of snippiness. John and I had a conference the second night and that seemed to help.

In all it was a decent trip. SchmoopyBaby had an absolute BLAST playing with his Grandma and riding on his Auntie's shoulders and I ate more than my fill of potato latkes. Here are a couple of pics of the merriment.


Don't look now, there's a monkey on your back, Auntie! (Please ignore the diapers drying on the fireplace in the background)

Auntie's head is a drum, hehehe

Not the best pic I've ever taken, but sadly it's the only one I got of SchmoopyBaby playing with Grandma and Grandpa. Watch out for your glasses, Grandma!