7QT: Lenten Stay-cation Edition

1. Winters in the Midwest tend to drag. (Understatement of the year.) When I was growing up there were several winters where my parents would take all seven stir-crazy kids to a small town hotel for one night of swimming, junk food, and Cartoon Network. It gave us something to look forward to in the bleak post-Christmas months and I have one particularly fond memory of swimming in a warm pool, surrounded by snowbanks that had drifted halfway up the glass walls of the pool room.

With that memory before me, in early January I proposed we plan a similar getaway to break up the Spring Fever insanity. A regular old pool is pretty limited fun for a two year old, so we decided to spring for a couple nights in one of the regionally famous indoor waterparks of the Wisconsin Dells. We'd never stayed in such an exotic place before and the pictures looked magical and full of warm, summery promise.

2. Enter The Cold That Will Not End. As we limped through weeks of dripping noses and hacking coughs I put off booking our rooms just in case sneezes turned to the flu. We settled on a Sunday-Tuesday trip for the cheaper prices and day-of availability. Eric requested PTO, but only because he knew he could revoke it if we had to cancel our trip.

Long, crabby, congested, teething story short - we didn't make it to the Dells. We went ahead with the time off but settled last minute on one night in a much more expensive local waterpark hotel, and despite a morning of epic tantrums, snapped responses, and sullen silences, a Plan and multiple Expectations still managed to slip in among the swimsuits as I packed. These harbingers of doom stayed behind at the hotel, laughing at our slumped and feverish backs as we trudged home hours earlier than expected Monday morning.

Getting our hopes up before we head to the splash pad

3. The rest of Monday was spent staring at screens, walls, and the occasional pillow. Eric slept off his fever on the couch with Sprout, who watched Land Before Time on repeat. I begged an uncharacteristically crabby Poppy to please just take a freaking nap, and sulked around the house to make sure everyone realized just how ruined my vacation was.

My inner monologue revolved around snarky comebacks to justify my petty attitude.  
It is Lent after all, go figure it ended up being a penitential vacation, I should probably just offer it up *dramatic eye-roll*. 
Yes, I know it's Lent so I shouldn't binge on leftover snacks, but I barely slept last night!
Oh, perfect, Poppy woke up again. Good thing Eric's too sick to help. At least he gets a vacation.

The snark quickly devolved into self pity, made worse by the fact that I knew I didn't really have much to complain about. There's nothing like self-awareness to ruin a good pity-party!

4. Tuesday burst upon us with sunshine and dripping eaves. Eric let me sleep in as late as a hungry Poppy would allow, and then we broke out the sunglasses and headed outside for a long family walk.

A few good puddle stomps washed away the remaining crankiness and we all made peace. We spent the sunny hours playing Pooh-sticks in the curb rivers and building a Snow Bear to protect the back yard from heffalumps and woozels. A dinner out to Chik-fil-A topped us off and our family vacation came to an unexpectedly graceful conclusion.

Sprout dressed up for the occasion

5. One of my Lenten resolutions this year is to have a couple pieces of chocolate every evening. It sounds a little funny at first, but our "penitential vacation" re-emphasized the importance of what I have come to call my "kindness chocolate." I am not just a seasoned pity-partier, I am also quite talented at taking it to the next level: self-loathing. For various reasons which I will not get into now, I tend to move quickly from "I messed up" to "I am a mess." And that's putting it nicely.

The idea behind the "kindness chocolate" is to think of it as a gift from God the Father himself. No matter how my day went - no matter how much or how little I accomplished, how loving or short-tempered I was, no matter how loveable I felt - I am to receive this chocolate as a sign of my inherent worth and God's unfailing love for me. Eric often brings it to me in the evening which serves as an added bonus, reminding me of his love even on difficult days.

Looking back, I realize that not only did I skip the chocolate on the crappy vacation days, I kept that decision carefully on the verge of my consciousness. I "knew" I didn't deserve the chocolate, but I also knew that was precisely the point. I didn't want to have that conversation with myself, let alone with God, so I kept it shut carefully in the cupboard, along with the chocolate, to wait for a "better" day.

If nothing else, it has served as good reminder that healing takes time and effort, even when chocolate-coated.

6. I fell off the band-wagon with all my other Lenten resolutions during our vacation, and it's been hard to pick back up again now that I've lost steam. On the one hand I want to beat myself up about failing yet again, because I do this every year, and what made me think I would actually be good at Lent for once... and on the other hand, here's yet another reminder of why God and chocolate are better than God alone. (I'm quoting Teresa of Avila there - maybe she had her own stash of kindness chocolate!)

7. Sprout has been upping the toddler logic lately. He's got an answer for everything and we're having to carefully pick our battles so it's not a constant fight.

Preparing an argument for the defense.

Me: There are oranges and cheese stick on the table for snack.
Sprout: I don't want oranges and cheese stick!
Me: You want something else?
Sprout: Yes, I don't want that.
Me: Well, what do you want?
Sprout: I want that.
Me: You want oranges and cheese stick?
Sprout: Yes, that's what I love. 

Eric: Stop waving your feet around, you're bonking your sister.
Sprout: I have to fly my feet in the air, that's why my socks have helicopters on them.

Me: Stop kicking the table.
Sprout: I always kick the table, that's why I have feet.

"I always, that's why" has become the standard response when he's told to stop doing something, and when I re-read the following poem by A.A. Milne last night I had to wonder if Christopher Robin was coming up on 3 years old when his dad wrote it:

Christopher Robin goes
Hoppity, hoppity,
Hoppity, hoppity, hop.
Whenever I tell him
Politely to stop it, he
Says he can't possibly stop.

If he stopped hopping,
  he couldn't go anywhere,
Poor little Christopher
Couldn't go anywhere...
That's why he always goes
Hoppity, hoppity,
Hoppity,
Hoppity,
Hop.

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