First Night Away

We're all away from Sydney for a few days on a little holiday with Jason's parents. We're in lovely Port Macquarie, which is about 5 hours north of Sydney on the coast. It's real purty. See?

Last night was our first here, and if you've travelled with small children, you know that the first night anywhere usually turns out to be interesting. Here's a brief run-down of our night.

6:30pm: After a hearty cry, Grace falls into exhausted sleep.
8pm: Ava and Nate in their room reading stories. (They each have a twin bed in the room across from Jason, Grace and I.)
8:15pm: Ava is dosed up with cold medicine, kids are tucked in, and it's lights out. (By lights out, I mean that I have to find a way to put the bedside lamp between them on the floor so that it's enough light for Nate, not too much for Ava and not a fire hazard. This takes about 5 minutes.)
8:22pm: Nate says he's "not comfy".
8:30pm: Ava is still coughing
8:40pm: Asleep!
9:30pm Grace wakes up, re-insert paci.
(Allow me to write a brief note to the inventors of the Nuk: Dear brilliant pacifier technicians: I love you. I always have. Please, please don't ever change. I never believed all that stuff the others said about you, anyway. You have been my near-constant companion these 6 years. Thank you--God bless you and the work you do.)

10:45pm Jason and I creep stealthily into our room where Grace sleeps in the corner and try to go to sleep. "Sleep quieter!" I say to him, but only in my mind. Because I don't want to make any noise.

11:30pm Grace wakes up, re-insert paci (We ask ourselves: Is she hot? Cold? Is she "not comfy"?)

1:44am Ava wakes up with a stuffy nose, says she can't go back to sleep. I tell her to try. (Isn't that helpful advice?

2:12am Ava still can't go back to sleep. Jason goes in there and tells her to try. Inexplicably, this seems to work.

Half-past I've Stopped Looking at the Clock: Grace cries out, Jason does the paci thing.

Quarter till Really? You're Waking Up Again?: Nate calls out, has to be readjusted.

Five minutes after I Hate My Life and Everyone In It: Nate gets up to go potty, runs into the wall and gets a bloody nose. Jason crams tissues up his little nostrils and we put him back to bed.

I think I'm leaving out a few Grace wake-ups, but you get the point.

Finally at about 6am, Nate is up for good. Jason gets up with him. Grace is up at 6:30 and Ava shortly thereafter. And here we are! It's a beautiful morning on our holiday and Jason and I feel like we got run over by a truck. A truck filled with snotty, bloody, peeing children. (Who, of course, we love dearly.)

There's something about being up in the night with kids. At some point, you don't really care if you go back to sleep, you just want it to be morning. You long for the daylight. Because the night seems to go on forever and everything that happens in it seems so surreal. It's always a relief when daylight starts peeking around those hotel curtains. At least with three kids now, I don't freak out about it like I used to. I can almost be amused about it at 3am. Almost.

Well, we have approximately ten hours to re-group and strategize for tonight. Part of our plan is to run the kids up and down the beach until they are too exhausted to move. That usually helps.