Travelin' man

Let me just say a few words about my awesome husband. Months ago he planned a great weekend for us out in Hood River for a combined birthday trip and a general “let’s get out of the house” for the family. So in a few words, he’s awesome, and thoughtful and wonderful and lovely.

We started the day at the Day out with Thomas the Train. If you don’t have a boy in your household, you may not have been introduced to the wonders of Thomas the Train and His Many Train Friends, Each of Whom Has a Name To Try To Remember (long name, but a cute show).

If you already know of Thomas, you will realize that this is a Holy Grail realized for a little boy with generalized Train Fever. For the event (which tours the nation, so hey, look for it in a city near you) they dress up an engine as Thomas (complete with shifty eyes and a toot toot whistle) and for a not totally small contribution to the economy, you get to take a half hour ride in one of the not-so-climate controlled cars. It was so incredibly fun to watch Colin’s eyes light up when he saw Thomas and got to take a ride. The grounds had a lot of fun small-kid activities including a 1/12 scale (maybe? I could be making that up) train that you can sit on and ride around a little track. Rob and Colin took the ride, I watched and laughed from the sidelines. Pictures? That would have required us to remember to bring the camera. So use your imagination please.

Colin is what you might call a serious-fun boy. He’s very serious about his fun. As in, no expression on his face except for slight furrowed brow and a slightly agape mouth so he can take in all the surroundings and a few flies too. No smiles, no giggles, no “wheeee!!” We’re sure he’s loving it, since he is terribly excited when telling us about it later, (bwareareare Train!! bareawerafcasbbehrse Chuga chuga Toot Toot!! baraoisdfjaenr Thomas!) but in the moment? All business.

From the Thomas event we headed to the Bonneville Hot Springs Resort and Spa for the night. We found a great crab shack for dinner and when we were ready to plop Colin into his Pack and Play for the night, he decided the big bed was much more his style. Rob and I looked at each other. We’ve never been too fond of sharing our bed with Colin. In the early days we would try to extend our morning sleep by “letting” him cuddle with us, but Colin had other plans. Namely to either scream in protest at the prospect of laying down again, or he wanted to crawl all over our faces nuking us with his napalm bulging diaper.

It was a king bed, so we decided to give it a shot. Not that 7:30pm was really our ideal bedtime (we had brought a little movie player to watch after he fell asleep) but I was still in East Coast hangover so whatever. It was kind of cute at first, he would take turns snuggling with each of us. And we certainly preferred not having to try to keep him from screaming in protest trying to get him to sleep. But after an hour of taking turns telling Colin to “Lay back down!” “Quit hitting me” "Go to sleep!" and playing “what’s dat?” noise (It's water. It's more water. It's a bird. It's a door closing.), Colin settled down. Not that it was by any means a restful night. We discovered a few things about our offspring during the night. Who knew?

Colin snores. Loudly. I have never heard this, since he wakes up whenever I try to check on him, and I tend to leave him well enough alone once he’s asleep.

Colin grinds his teeth. Rob reported this one. By the time this little nugget of info came to light, I had thrown in a pair of earplugs desperately dug from the bottom of my makeup bag after the combined snore-fest of the two boys assaulted my ears.

Colin is a restless sleeper. We don’t know if this is in general or because of the situation. Throughout the long night we were both assaulted by light slaps to the face and creeping hands that would reach as Colin kept resettling himself. Colin kept scratching my back (not once by accident, but a purposeful scritch, scritch, scritch). And Rob ended up with Colin’s mouth on his nose.

Colin is not particularly interested in letting people sleep once he’s awake. His preferred method of rousting someone from bed is to walk up to the bed and yell loudly. Here’s a sample morning conversation:

“RARWWRRRR!!”
“Colin, I’m still sleeping, please don’t do that.”
“Okay.”
“Thanks.”
“RARWWRRRR!!”

Since we were up *cough cough* we started our day. We went back into Hood River to take a brunch train up the valley. I think if he had known it was a three hour ride, Rob would have made other plans considering that our travel buddy isn’t really known for his ability to sit and watch the scenery go by. In any event, Colin did enjoy the train ride, the food was good, the country was beautiful, and luckily we could get up and walk around.

We were happy to hit the road for home, we had a sleepy but very train-content little man in tow and we had had a great family weekend. Thanks Rob, for such a great weekend and all the planning that went into it. Love ya.

Oh! And the best birthday present of all, Colin has been going pee in the potty! It's the little things in life...