How Jay Z saved my sanity

The girls and I have been visiting family and friends in New England for over a week now.  The girls and I are missing home and Papa more than I had anticipated.  We are all feeling a bit frazzled and I am  definitely stressed and longing to just hang at our own house.

I have learned much on this trip about what not to do when traveling with small children.  In my zeal to try and see as many people as posible I have overbooked us I'm afraid.  The girls have been taken out of their element, away from their dad and their routine, but all things considered are doing very well.  Moments within the day are rough.  Ada can be very intense and when she is tired she is quite a force.  I'm trying to organize the coming week to be less hectic for them and hopefully that will help their collective moods (and mine)!

We were able to get a delightful taste of the White Mountains this weekend.  It was wonderful.  I didn't realize how much I had missed seeing the mountains.  We were able to spend 2 days on Lake Winnipesaukee- boating, swimming, beach, lobster, campfire.  What could be more New England?

The girls on the boat. 

Took the boat to get this ice cream.  Gampa and Ada are "cheers-ing" their matching purple ice cream.

The male bald eagle that we saw on our boat ride.  Couldn't get a good shot of the female in the nest.

Emma ended up going in even though she didn't have a suit on.  It's very difficult to keep this little fish out of the water.

Do you see how tired she is?

Pre-breakfast fishing on the dock.  They had gone digging for worms in the garden and Ada carried the bucket of worms to the water.  They came back and Ada excitedly reported they caught a fish, but when I asked if we could eat it for breakfast she called me "silly" and said Gampa put it back in the water.

Visiting my grandparents- their great grandparents.  Again, look how tired.  It's kind of painful to look at their little sleepy faces.

The only thing better than roasting marshmallows...s'mores.

From there we went directly to the South Shore for another visit and to see the ocean.  I decided it would be best to drive at night after dinner and bath so the girls could sleep in the car and we didn't waste the daytime in the car.  In theory this was a great idea, but since the daylight lasts so long these days they couldn't sleep very easily.  Emma finally was so angry that she couldn't fall asleep (at 8:30) she was just screaming and none of the usual things were helping.  I was tired and couldn't listen to an unsoothable baby crying and I didn't want Em to keep up Ada.  I could feel myself loosing my patience and about to start yelling- although that would have done no good at all- and decided to turn on the radio.    I knew I needed to either listen to the radio loudly or pull over get out of the car and scream.  It's been a long week!  I found a hip hop station that was playing Big Pimpin.  I cranked it to drown out the crying.    It worked- I calmed down and Emma calmed down and actually fell asleep to Jay Z.  I'm certain that there are mommy bloggers out there that would judge me and that's just fine because sometimes we just need to do what we need to do.  Survival baby!


Ultimately we arrived safe and sound in Marshfield and drank in the ocean for 2 days.  It was wonderful.

Sisters at the ocean

Ada walking along the beach with Peg.  

This is my water child.  She was ecstatic.  In fact, we ended up walking in the surf a bit and it was all I could do for her to not run in even though it was splashing on her and quite cold.  She LOVED the ocean!  She learned how to say beach on this trip and her annunciation blows me away- I'll try to get it on film.  

Me with my Ada boo.