Duck It

On a whim, and by this I mean that I didn't think it all the way through, I decided to take the kids on a 4 hour road trip.  By myself.   All three of them.  Bacon is only a year old. 

I feel that sometimes I overestemate my abilities as a parent. 

When my end comes, I'm pretty sure that the words "over confident" will be mentioned in some accident report somewhere. 

But we went mostly on the urging of Hossmom.  She talked me into it.  Although in hindsight, I think that I was manipulated into giving her a free night of wine drinking and watching sappy movies.  I suppose there is only so much Spy Kids a person can take and she gladly encouraged me to take the kids to the space museum in the middle of no where Kansas.

I came to this relization as I was sitting on the floor of the hotel bathroom, the cold hard floor.  It was the only moment I could get a thought to myself, a little time away from the constant questions and the 1 year old baby/toddler that has decided that sleep sucks, hotels suck, dad sucks, let's scream when I put you down and scream even louder when I pick you up. 

The trip down was great.  With a whole hour to plan this trip we were on the road right at Bacon's nap time.  He slept almost the entire way.  I through red box movies at Little Hoss and Bubba Hoss.  I listened to old 60 minute shows on my phone.  The trip down was freaking awesome.  I am super dad, I need no planning. 

But I do need diapers.  Had to make a stop for those.  Rookie mistake but we power on. 

We get to the hotel.  It looks nice on the outside, it looks awesome in fact.  I got a deal on it, I prepaid.  I can adventure like no one's business.  In my wife's words, in convincing me to go when I brought up the idea several hours ago, "It's what you do Hoss.  Take them.  Go."  She's wiley and played right into my ego there. 

The reason I picked this particular hotel was because of the awesome pool.  It was huge, it was indoors, it had a space theme.  On line it looked perfect.  Any seasoned Dad adventurer knows that you always pick a hotel that has a pool and I picked the one with the freaking awesome pool.  Majesticically awesome is how I would describe myself. 

Then we went in and discovered that the pool was closed for two more months but we were free to look at how awesome it would have been from the locked glass doors that my children are currently drooling on.  The check in lady, no fault of hers I'm sure, says that she is sorry that the pool is closed and she agrees that I should have been told this when I made the reservation and paid.  I ask her for suggestions for kid activities that I can do after 5pm, the current time.  She has none.  She should get out more. 

We get our room and I ask for a luggage cart.  They don't have one.  Well, they have one but they can't find it.  They have maintence men looking for it though so I'm sure they will find it soon.  I'm not quite sure how I'm going to move all the baby gear plus our own luggage in without it, but it's ok.  Super dad. 

We go to our room while they look for a cart.  The key card doesn't work.  We try it again.  And again.  And again.  On the tenth time and about when I'm going to give up, it finally works.  This does not bode well.  The room is nice enough but it does have a distinctive dead stripper smell.  But hey, you get what you already paid for.  3 seconds in the room though and I know that this isn't going to work. I'm not spending the night with three car tired kids in a room watching bad cable for the next 5 hours. 

I google nearby hotels.  I call.  The first one that has a room and a pool that is open gets our vote.  I tell them we'll be there in ten minutes.  The front desk at our current hotel is understanding when I tell them that we can't stay.  I explain that I promised my kids a pool and that if I had known, I wouldn't have made the reservation.  She understands and checks me out.  She promises that my money will be refunded on my card.  In a week or two.  Fuck it, good enough.  On our way out, the luggage cart magically appears because of course it does. 

We get to our other hotel and they indeed have a pool.  It's quite small, about the size of a good living room.  And the water appears a little yellowish.  No problem, I can work with yellow water.  And they have a working luggage cart.  I put all three kids on the luggage cart and our baby gear.  I'm just happy we are checked in with a pool.  I had to make two trips, 3 kids take up a lot of luggage space but that's ok, they thought it was part of the adventure not Dad trying to find a way to cope. 

Dinner is next.  I pick a buffet thinking it will have something for everyone.  It does but again, my lack of planning and reasoning is where I mess up.  Have you ever tried plating food from a buffet with one hand?  Let me tell you, it's not simple.  You get burned alot as you try to magically flip a piece of pizza on a poorly balanced plate that you have put on a non-exsistant counter.  I couldn't put Bacon down, he would start screaming.  I don't want to cause a scene.  But what I do want to do is put on a show.  So with the plate wedged against my fat roll and metal bar holding up the sneeze guard, I plate what ever is infront of me.   Bacon and I are having some sort of chicken, some pasta thingy and I was able to grab the last two slices of pizza.  Suck it world. 

Bubba Hoss is doing well and is taking very slow steps with his food that his sister helped him get.  He has a knack for dropping everything so he doesn't want to do it here, he's a good boy.  It takes him 15 minutes to get to our table.  I go back to get drinks and realize that I have forgotten a sippy cup.  It's time to teach Bacon how to drink out of a straw.  He's 1, can't stay a baby forever. 

Dinner is finally done and I leave a genrous tip for whoever as I'm sure they will survey the amount of food on the floor and begin crying.  Look, Bacon likes to chunk food when he's tired and right now, he's a bit tired.  5 bucks says I'm sorry, 10 says I'm really sorry and 15 bucks says please don't look at me when I quickly leave. 

Back at the hotel, swimming goes well.   No one gets hurt, no one pukes or craps in the pool and Dad is everyone's favorite pool toy.  I think we have rebounded well to our early misfortune.  Super dad. 

And then at bed time, it all goes to shit.  Little and Bubba are in their PJ's.  They are playing and it's getting late now, around 10.  Bacon however decides that he doesn't want to sleep.  He doesn't want to play either.  Nor does he want to lay on me, or the bed or in his pack and play that I brought.  What he wants to do is to break my will.  He's doing a pretty good job of it.  For over an hour I fight this. 

I know that he is tired, that he is in fact overtired and that is why he is being such a butthole.  We hash it out with me saying "duck it" (that's parent code for Fuck it.)  I put him in his pack and play and head to the bathroom to sit on the floor and finally cal Hossmom and congratualte her on a well played manipulation. 

Eventually everyone does go to sleep.  I come out of the bathroom and greatfully head towards the bed.  In an hour, Bacon wakes up. He screams.  I pick him up.  I soothe him.  I put him back down.  This continues every hour until 4:30 and again I say duck it. 

I wheel his pack and play into the bathroom and shut the door.  I figure that the acustics in there will at least entertain him for a while.  He immediatly falls asleep knowing that he has triumphed over me.  I am not super dad, or majestic dad.  I am over confident dad and he pays a price. 

That price of course is paying for one hotel room that I don't use and for 3 all day passes to the space museum because it was the best deal.  After I buy the tickets they inform me that the two special shows we want to see begin at 2 and 4 pm only.  It's currently 9am.  We need to leave by 1. 

Over confident Dad, I like that guy, he gets shit done. 

Duck it, let's have fun while we are here.