Leaving a Trail of Chaos in our Wake

Thanksgiving is a crazy weekend for us.  We visit with my extended family on Saturday, Ian's on Sunday and then drive like crazy to make it home on Monday to put the animals to bed and take the big boys to their first skating lesson of the season.  We know in advance that we are setting ourselves up for three days of chaos but somehow it always ends up being worse than we anticipate.

This year, Alistair decided to make Thanksgiving unforgettable to mark his first one with us.  He succeeded.

It all began with his refusal to sleep on Saturday night.  Of all the nights to do this, it had to be the one before I needed to drive us from the cottage to Burlington.  Ali cried, he vomited and I ended up sitting up with him all night while he slept restlessly in my arms.  The slightest twitch on my part resulted in him beginning the cry and puke sequence all over again.

Do not get me wrong, Alistair is a wonderful baby.  His one major downfall; however, is that he loathes riding in the car.  The general consensus is that he likely gets motion sickness.  Knowing this, he received a healthy (though safe) dose of Gravol before we got on the road Sunday morning.  He mercifully slept until the edge of Toronto when the traffic stopped because of the closure of the Gardiner Expressway.  I cannot begin to describe the horrific noise that emerged from that tiny body of his for the next hour and a half as we sat in bumper to bumper traffic on the crawl across the city to Grandma Cora's house.

I must admit that I was slightly worse for wear upon our arrival at Uncle Tommy's Thanksgiving Fiesta Sunday afternoon.

Shockingly, things went quite well at the party until we sat down for dinner.  Before I even took my first forkful of turkey, Alistair twisted in the baby carrier and grabbed a giant handful of pipping hot mashed potatoes off of my dinner plate.  He screamed in pain as two large burn blisters appeared on his hand and then proceeded to cry hysterically for a long, long time.  It was horrible.

And so, after the many hours it took to get there, it was all over and we hurried out of the party with a screaming baby before dessert was even served.

I am exhausted.  Ian is exhausted.  The big boys and the dogs are exhausted.

Even Alistair is finally exhausted.

All this to say that I am oh so glad to be back home on the farm.  I am by far the happiest when I am in a quiet barnyard surrounded by my animals.

I know I will eventually have to leave my barnyard oasis again but I choose not to think about that until absolutely necessary.  You never know, maybe in the meantime the Earth will get hit by a meteor and the only thing that will remain standing will be Gael Glen Farm.  We are pretty self-sufficient....