Exhaustatron

Oh heavens, busy weekends do me in.

It wasn't even like I had to run a gazillion errands, or scour the house, or attend to the mountain of laundry still waiting for attention. It was family...

Saturday was normal for about 2 hours... which were occupied by waking up, making breakfast, and eating breakfast. After that, we got busy. First up - Father's Day shopping.

For any who know me, they KNOW beyond a shadow of a doubt that I do NOT leave gift shopping until the last minute. It's not my way... never has been, never should have been. Then I got married.

For my personal needs, the shopping was short and easy... 4 cards and some scratchie lottery tickets for my dad. I had had my husband's gifts from me for the better part of two months, and his gift from my daughter for a month at least. Ok... I needed to get some wrapping paper too.

So we spent much of the morning deciding what my daughter was going to "buy" for her granddads and then getting it. No - she's not really all that equipped to make these decisions herself... she's only just over a year old. Her dad was supposed to come up with the ideas... since I had managed her gifts (including my own from her) for Mother's Day. When we finally decided what to get the only hindrance was the fact that I had left my wallet in my car and by the time I'd retrieved it my husband had already paid for my purchase.

** I know I should have been grateful that he covered the tab for me, and I am, but at the same time, this practice (in which both my husband and my mother participate) makes me crazy angry, because:
a) I LIKE being financially independent, being able to afford and buy things WITH MY OWN MONEY
and
b) if you're GOING to pay for something for me, freakin' stop me from running the double football field to and from the car BEFORE... I... LEAVE!!!
Rant complete ***

To make up for it, I bought him and iced coffee.

Anywho... after this it was off to Hallmark to get some cards. I got one, two, three, four, five:
(hubby from me, daddy from our daughter, my dad from me, my dad from our daughter, his dad from our daughter) in about 10 minutes. Then I took our little girl to go pick out wrapping paper and keep her occupied while her dad got one card for his dad. (OK, and replaced the card I got "from baby for Papa" because he found a much cuter one.)

I love my husband... I love him more than I have ever loved any man ever... but he's SO bad at selecting cards. Not that he makes bad selections, quite the contrary... but he takes a REALLY LONG TIME to do it.

I honestly think it's a difference in our style. I find something generally pretty good, and decide... "yeah, for something I didn't write, this comes pretty close to covering how I feel about person X." I think my husband actually believes that someone at Hallmark (or other greeting card publishing companies) knows exactly how he feels about person X. Or maybe I just have a "the right card" divining rod in my fingers... I don't know... but it had to have taken us a half an hour in the card shop... which was JUST ABOUT more than our little girl could handle.

Had I known they had a "coloring table" I might have bought my husband enough time to look through another couple dozen cards, but she was tearing around the store looking for more and more stuffed animals and hell bent for leather to get mama to sweat... and my husband ended up just 'up and deciding' on a card for his dad from us.

Cashed out and on our way... trying to figure out what to get for his dad from the two of us.

My husband had seen the perfect gift on a WAY LESS THAN perfect website... which resulted in his not being able to get said perfect gift... but he came up with an alternate plan - two actually - and we decided that we could certainly get something acceptable - GOOD EVEN - at a giant sporting goods establishment along the way. So one quick stop to get lottery tickets and we were done shopping for the day.

Then... ugh... dreaded family visit. I'm not a big fan of my extended family as a whole. There are some members that I ADORE... who are good, generally nice, and really wonderful people. There are other members of my family who I don't really care to deal with... ever. There was, fortunately, a good mix of these people at the party on Saturday... and while we only stayed for a few hours... I'm good for another several months.

Yesterday - Father's Day - was long.

We woke at a decent hour, hit the road, stopped for SUCCESSFUL (yay!) shopping for my husband's dad, entertained the baby with a statue of enormous bears fighting over a dead moose, washed the car, and continued on the journey... stopping several times for juice and a diaper change, strawberries, and a diaper run - since the aforementioned diaper change a) was unnecessary, and b) resulted in a casualty when a tab tore off of an otherwise mint condition diaper. I could have packed more to begin with, but I was banning contingencies from my morning. I was stupid.

After insufficient napping on Saturday (because of the errands and party) and the early start (without our usual breakfast) my daughter was inclined to irritability yesterday. Combine that with a 2 and a half hour drive (to her paternal grandparents' house) and her reluctance (for whatever reason - most likely the frequent stops) to take a proper nap in the car, and you will understand that it was NO SMALL MIRACLE that she was beautifully behaved throughout the entire visit.

We spent a lot of time outside playing in the grass (one of her simple pleasures) , we had a nice lunch/supper, we had ice cream, the dad's opened their gifts (the "quick pick" card was considered perfect!), we played in a small park, my daughter made a fridge-picture for her grandmother... and 5 hours later we packed up to go.

She was good - even still - for about a minute and half. Then she started crying. Five minutes later she was asleep. We drove in sleeping-baby-bliss for the better part of half of our drive home.

When we stopped for dinner - more accurately, when she heard the phrase CHOCOLATE MILK - my daughter woke up, pleasant enough and hungry. She ate some, she drank some, she started crying. She cried more or less for the next 45 minutes - which should have been between an hour and an hour and a half.

Screaming baby + stressed husband = smashed accelerator.

She stopped crying when my husband started singing to her. She perked up when we turned onto our road. She was playful once we got out of the car. Too many hours in the car seat (which we call "the box").

After all of this, a bath, some strawberries (those same berries I bought along the way earlier in the day), and off to bed.

Yawn...