No Place Like Home

We left the Outer Banks yesterday morning, and planned a long, scenic drive back.   We had rented our house out to other vacationers (hey – we live on the water, so why not, right?) and their “check out” wasn’t until 11 AM today, while our vacation check out was at 11 AM on Saturday.   Highlights from the 24 hours we  took to get home:

– I actually nursed Cooper while he was strapped in the car seat.   No, the car wasn’t moving; Casey was loading up the last of our stuff, and we strapped the kids in the car for the last 15 minutes of loading so that we could race in and out with bags.   He was loosing it – way late for a morning nap and already  hungry for lunch.   I leaned over his seat (a little bit of an acrobatic feat) and lifted my shirt.   Bliss for him, peace and quiet and a three our nap to celebrate for us!

– We decided to stop at Chincoteague Island – home of the feral ponies – for the afternoon.   After visiting a brand-spankin’-new playground at the water’s edge, we hit a rural arcade and Casey and Kenny rode Go Karts and Bumper Boats while Cooper and I sat in the car and … yep – nursed right there in the front seat, this time with him in my lap.   I tried to look cool and non-chalant as preteens and vacationing families walked past, as if breast feeding in the front seat of a car in a busy parking lot is just par for the putt-putt course…

– After a stroll through another park, for Dudley’s  sake, and a  leisurely local seafood dinner, we got back into the car to head to my parent’s house for the night.     We hadn’t gotten 45 minutes down the road when the Bottomless Pit (who’d already eaten more than Kenny at dinnertime) decided that he needed  a nightcap.   We needed gas anyway, so we pulled into a small town Texacoand there I sat, half-topless again, under the glow of the neon star.     I don’t know if it was all the Dr. Pepper I’d had that afternoon or what, but this time there was no soporific effect, and my little bull screamed for another 30 minutes down the road.   Waaaaa…

(By the way, Cooper has nearly given up nursing.   Maybe it was the sudden inferred inaccessibility of my breasts that put him into a binge, but he nursed more yesterday than he has in one day since he was 6 months old.)

We arrived at my folk’s around 9:30 and though Cooper and Kenny had been snoring in the backseat, they were instantly awake.   Kenny was soothed back into dreamland soon enough, but Cooper turned into a Cowboy and hammed it up for the next hour and a half.   I tried nursing (again) and then a bottle, but he was rarin’ to go – ready to par-tay.   Yeee haw.   He wiggled, giggle and crawled like a boy on fire.   It was hysterically funny, but we were all getting kind of tired and were really ready for him to hit the hay.   Casey finally held him immobile in a dark room and he fitfully dozed off, only to be wide awake again at 4:30 in the morning, ready to start all over again.   Go figure.

But we had a great morning at my parent’s house, eating pancakes on the screened porch and letting the boys play in the dirt.    We finally packed it up again and headed to our own house, arriving right at 11, having missed our renters by minutes, it seems.   They left the house spotless.   Pristine.   And they washed, dried and folded all the linens.     I actually got a lump in my throat as I went from room to room and saw what a perfect job they did of caring for our house.   They even left us flowers.  

I think the best part of it all is that we still have one more day off tomorrow… we don’t have any plans other than fishing and setting the crab traps and playing in the back yard.   Now that’s a vacation!