Vamos A La Playa (Oh Oh Oh Oh Oh)

Nate and I are preparing to depart for the land of sombreros, ponchos, and other lame cultural clichés tomorrow. This also justifies my gross blog neglect this week - I could either spend a few more hours with my kids...or with all of yours. Mine won out, although a little narrowly for comfort.

This will be our first ever real vacation since I got pregnant with Thalia, and certainly the first time we've left Sage at all. Of course my heart starts breaking into bits at the thought of leaving them. Teeny little microscopic bits that just lie there in a big soup of guilt, quivering and heaving, and sometimes bumping into the small pieces of ham. I guess Guilt Soup is not kosher. Which is surprising when you think about it.

But then I remind myself about all the beachy wedding festivities in store, the boat tour, the free-flowing margaritas, seeing my nearly 90 year-old grandmother dancing the hora as played by a mariachi band, along with the then possibility of my first full night's sleep in twelve months (!!!) and I think it will be just awesome. Provided I can get over the fact that I have to wear a bathing suit in public.

Hey, I tell myself, I weren't meant to have thighs the size of small schooners, God wouldn't have invented the pareo.

The girls (I'm still not used to saying that - how weird) will be staying with Grammy and Grandpa, who have graciously agreed to take over costume making duty, thus sparing Thalia the humiliation of going trick-or-treating around our building as something incorporating Saran Wrap, tin foil, and a black sharpie.

Grammy asked me to put together a list for her with instructions for the girls, and as I write her bedtime instructions, it is making me laugh.

-Thalia likes to go to sleep with many binkies. She will ask for "More binkies!" regardless of how many she has. So give her two or three and hold one for negotiation. You will need it.

-Thalia wants to put her PJs on "all by herself." Make sure to help her with this.

-If Thalia asks to sleep in her sleeping bag, it's not actually a sleeping bag. It's a small, drawstring cotton bag that a sleeping bag came in. A sleeping bag bag. She fits in it up to her hips.

-Put her in the sleeping bag bag, then layer blankets on her in the following order: Purple blanket (shiny side down), pink blanket, cherries blanket, Momsie blanket. If you forget the sleeping bag bag, you will have to start the layering process all over again.

-You may be tempted to leave her bottoms off if the warmer weather keeps up. I'd caution not to think of them as pajama bottoms - think of the as thing that keeps her diaper on.

-If you do not keep her diaper on you will not be happy in the morning. Let's just leave it at that.

It's funny how our kids' routines seem so, well..routine, until we have to describe them to someone else. And how much sometimes we curse these routines for taking our time and energy when there's a show to watch or a dog to walk or a post to write or something we'd rather be doing. And how much sometimes we wish we could pass these routines onto someone else.

And then, when we do pass them onto someone else, how very much we will miss them.

Adios, amigos. I'm happy to do a Cuervo shot for you - but you're on your own with the hangover.