Homecoming

Well, we made it. 10 days in the sweltering/freezing mecca of nothing that is Forestville on the Russian River. When we first arrived, as you could tell by my post, the house seemed like a disaster. I always amazes me how photographers know how to make a place look huge and then you get there and it's a box. I was horrified to find a tiny living room, dirty floors, dark bedrooms and so on. But the house grew on me after a bit. It turned out to work out ok in terms of layout. Childproofing was a bit hard but we figured things out and we settled in. The kids really didn't even act funny the first night or day like it was strange we were in a new place. I was shocked, but I guess we tired them out at the pediatrician that morning so they went to sleep and slept well. The best a mom can hope for the first night at a new place.

I am wondering how to make this blog funny. So far, just ho hum.

I think I'll have to be funny starting tomorrow when I start relating anecdotes of our trip. Suffice it to say, plenty of funny things happened and some unpleasant ones too, but not many. I learned that I can survive days upon end without a nanny, although I had a lot of help obviously. I bonded better with the kids, although I may have been witnessing the beginning of separation anxiety as J spent 70% of his time in my lap and whimpered at the door to the kitchen when I was in there. We had some major behavior issues with B who has become quite defiant, but let's cross our fingers that its a phase. A is definitely hyper active and literally can not sit still if she's not sleeping. God help us all.

I've been struggling with coming back here and going back to the routine of letting someone else have the 'fun' part of the day with the kids most days. I mean we go out and do things in the morning with the kids, not much in the afternoon. The other option is to start doing things in the afternoon but if they nap well there's only an hour and a half before dinner really. What can we do in that amount of time? And I get so slow having run errands myself all morning, its hard to do something with all three kids in the afternoon. On vacation we did stuff in the mornings and let the kids play on the deck in the water table or pool in the afternoons. I sat and recovered from the morning. I then had energy to cook actual meals in the evenings. If I run all day? Not a chance I'll make it. So then I'd have to take the whole day with the kids in order to do the fun stuff with them. But I can't really do it alone. Going to the zoo with three mobile kids sounds like ultimate stupidity. And I can't see myself making the nannies take me with them since they'd probably rather hang out with their other nanny friends.

I don't know. I am only going to get more pregnant and less able as time goes on. Another thought I had was taking one kid at a time some mornings of the week for one on one time. I am not sure if they would miss each other or not. Perhaps they prefer each other to me? You just never know.

So, I return with much to reconsider and think about. But it was lovely to put the kids to bed and then have a great deck with a view to sit on and watch nature. As long as you were willing to ignore the trucks and semis and motorcycles with no mufflers that were constantly filling the quiet air with their noise pollution. We won't come back to this place but we will find a place nearby and without traffic noise to return to. All in all, a successful trip!

Day one: a rousing success

Day one has been accomplished, and all went well. Except that I didn't get to sit down but once for 20 min the whole stinking day. But we have established that one kid loves the water, one thinks it's ok but she's going to keep to the shallows and the third is not going to have anything more to do with it after one false landing including water in the face.

I'm exhausted. Nice place if you could find a house without an interstate running past your bedroom window. Definitely worth exploring if there is a better house to rent.

Appearances may be deceiving

Well so far I am totally impressed with the way they took photos to make this place look huge. I mean, the photographer? Should be a professional real estate photographer. Made this place look like a mansion. And it is not quite how I imagined what with the back yard with 2 foot tall grass and down a set of stairs instead of something the kids could just run out to.

Also, the lack of air conditioning? Apparently is a problem. The heat is stifling in the house around 6 pm. What happens around 6 pm you might ask? Um, bedtime for triplets. So open a window you say? Um, apparently River Road, a most unassuming road winding through several small towns and villages between Santa Rosa and the coast is the busiest highway this side of the Mississippi. Especially at bedtime.

Yay. But, thanks to an eventful day full of shots (2, and not as painful because I insisted on some topical anesthetic I'd read about so they were much happier), a great pediatrician check up, visiting grandma's house for 3 seconds, a nap, and then 3 more seconds, and then arriving at a strange place full of sharp brick corners and kitchens with easily reachable household chemicals, we were exhausted. All of us.

They are asleep and I head that way too. We are not miserable, but things are not quite the rosy picture painted in the Russian River Rentals e-brochure. Oh no they are not. Because the housekeeper? Apparently doesn't do floors.