Over the River and Through the Woods

I'm too exhausted to properly catalogue my weekend, but the short of it is this:

• An eight-hour drive is a long f*cking drive even without a seven-month-old.
• With a seven-month-old, an eight-hour drive is enough to make you question the family bond.
• Holidays are both more taxing and more fun with a small children. They're awfully cute, and grandparents and aunts and uncles really adore them, but the problem is that they give you your little angel back after she's been wound up like a cheap yoyo at the last booth at Internet World 2000.
• Children don't sleep in Pack-n-Plays once they understand that you exist even when they can't see you.
• Nothing is better than sweet, blissful quiet.
• The little angel will go on a hunger strike if there is something better to look at. Like, oh, the general public, a high chair she's never seen before, or that panicked look on your face when you realize she's going to cry for food at 3 a.m. again because she hasn't eaten ALL DAY.
• An appreciation for physical comedy starts young. The little angel laughed hard for a half hour straight watching my beloved hit himself in the head with an empthy soda bottle (it was plastic).  I was shocked - I thought a healthy appreciation for violence was cultural.
• Little feet in footy pajamas just say "holiday."
• Even though everyone says not to compare your baby to others, it stung a bit that the little angel's one-day-older cousin is already crawling and she can't seem to get it down.
• However, she usually sleeps through the night, and he usually does not.
• I'm so happy the Christmas drive is only 2.5 hours and there is a crib at the other end.
• I noticed my nieces and nephews did keep aging, so the little angel should be relatively normal and much more fun to travel with by the time she is four or five, just about the time her younger sibiling will hit the terrible twos.