Back To Reality

It always seems difficult to get back in the swing of things upon returning home from a vacation. On the child front, I went from having three live-in babysitters one week, to having five live-in babysitters the next week, to having no live-in babysitters and being completely on my own with my toddler and Oh My GOD, how did I ever do this before, by MYSELF, and how soon does Oscar get home because this child seems to require constant ATTENTION, and you want me to fix you scrambled eggs AGAIN, and please dear holy gods of Disney, just suck my little boy into your alternate animal-speaking realities for FIVE MINUTES, would you, so I can go hide in my bedroom and pretend that I remember how this used to work!

Okay, honestly, it hasn't been that bad. It IS taking some adjusting, because two weeks is more than ample time for our routine to get completely tossed out the window. And reestablishing order with a 2 year old is like....well....I was going to come up with an appropriate analogy, but there isn't one really. Reestablishing order with a 2 year old is like nothing else. But for the most part, Turtle has been pretty easy-going about everything and has settled back into his own room and his own schedule fairly easily. I think that may have something to do with the fact that he's been very excitedly getting reacquainted with his toys, but whatever it is, I'm not complaining.

So kid-wise, we're not in really bad shape. But I am struggling with two things: fatigue and the weather. Working with a three-hour time difference between where you were and where you are now is always difficult. Add to that the fact that we tried to cram a lot into a short period of time, and the fact that Oscar's step-brother showed up somewhat unexpectedly with his new girlfriend and her three children (ages 2, 4, and 9) (about which you can expect to hear a long rant later) with all of the noise and chaos you can reasonably expect with five extra people hanging around the house for a week, and then, of course, there was the main reason for our visit: McPapa's birthday party, which took two solid days of cooking between me and McPapa to prepare.....Put it all together and I think it's pretty self-evident that despite all the fun we had, it was not the most restful of vacations.

That doesn't even take into account the fact that the day before we left NY for home, Oscar and I got three hours of sleep, and then flew 6+ hours with a cranky toddler. I think, if we were still childless, Oscar and I would have gotten home, collapsed on the bed and slept for at least eight hours straight. But, of course, we are not childless, so we were lucky to get in a couple of hours worth of nap before Turtle decided he was done with the sleeping thing, and let's check and make sure all of my toys are still here, shall we? So the utter and complete bone-weary exhaustion? Has not abated.

And it's not being done any favors by the weather here, either. I've never been a big fan of Arizona summers, but I can usually put up with it, because for the most part, I'm able to forget that this oppressive heat is not found many other places in the country. Of course, then I go and do something silly, like schedule a vacation right in the middle of one of the hottest parts of the summer, and go somewhere that I can sit outside on the deck in the morning and get a slight chill and drink my very hot coffee and not sweat a single drop. At all. All day long. And where, occasionally, I have to go inside to grab my jacket because I'm actually a little on the cold side. In July. (Really? There are places where you can DO that????) So then I come home during a streak of record-breaking heat and all I can do is look around and think "Has it ALWAYS been this mind-numbingly hot here?" before I pass out from heat exhaustion and dehydration.

It really isn't any worse than it's always been, but that's kind of the point. It's always this hot during the summer, and coming from the gorgeous weather we had in NY, it's taking me that much longer to readjust to it. (And also prompting me to peruse real estate websites, looking for homes for sale in McMama's area, but that's another story.) Not even the lure of the pool is helping, because, well, I'm kind of afraid to go out there, even though Oscar assures me that it did just fine in our absence and just needs the usual maintenance, not the $500 worth of chemicals and other treatments to bring it back from the deeply green color it was earlier this year.

So we're getting settled back in, but it's a slow process. Still, I can't really complain. We had a great time, and McMama and McPapa now understand what I mean when they're talking on the phone with Turtle and I tell them that they would be laughing their asses off if they could just see his facial expressions. And Turtle's aunties were able to indulge their need to spoil their favorite nephew by buying out half a toy store. And Oscar and I were able to enjoy some kid-free time. All in all, it was a great vacation. It's just too bad it had to be over so quickly.