My Mommy Vacation

This post is a little old. I forgot it was in my draft folder awaiting the photos. Anyway, enjoy.

I invented this new thing that I think all Mommies should try. It is called a "Mommy Vacation". I invented it to save myself from a break-down. I didn't think it would be so wonderful but it was. If you want to learn how to do it, read on.

1. You need to be really overwhelmed. This was best accomplished for me by having my husband sleep in while I fed the girls, picked out church outfits and showered all the three girls together (killer on my back).
2. You need to have been or be super stressed out. For me, I hate being late to places. And at 8:55 when I should have been out the door for church (we live within walking distance), I was still doing my hair (that's the thing with this short hair, I can't just not do it). At 9:00, I finished my hair and started my make-up and at 9:05, I was out the door while everyone else had left before me.
   
3. You need to have been let down. For me, I helped my daughter Chloe write her talk for Primary and practiced, practiced, practiced it. I hate when she has to be fed every line. I mean I think that is fine when they are little but I know she doesn't need that anymore. I told everybody the plan, Daddy would help with parts but Chloe would have to do her main story part by herself. Everybody agreed but that is not what happened and yeah she's a kid and blah, blah, blah but it really bugged me.
   
4. You need to be sick of your job. When we got home and there were dirty dishes everywhere, crumbs from breakfast on the floor and table and everybody whining about how they were hungry (or screaming) and even though claiming to be hungry not wanting to eat anything you offer.
5. You need to feel like you are going to snap.
6. Or if your baby just figured out how to scream, this alone can get you an automatic pass.
   

If you can fulfill these requirements, this is what you get:

• You go upstairs (or to some corner of your house) and you tell everybody that you are gone, off duty, ca-poot!
• You put Daddy in charge.
• You eat whatever you want all day and prepare no meals for anybody else. *(*The key here is that somebody else has to do the next three otherwise you will neutralize your vacation.)
• You do no dishes. *
  
• You don't have to clean anything up. *
  
• You can take a nap. A glorious, guilt-free nap.
• You can play on your computer, cleaning off the desktop, organizing photos, reading emails, and actually typing an email without anybody else trying to whack the keyboard while you're typing, etc.
• You can eat 2 packs of Little Debbie heart cakes if you want to. In theory.
  
• You make everybody ask permission to talk to you before they talk to you.
• You eat Fruit Loops for dinner (even though you don't really love cereal, it just sounds so good to you, you can't believe it), and you eat it in bed if you want to because you're the mom and you can do whatever you want.
• You can "visit" your family a few times on your vacation, but if your baby starts screaming, you just tell everybody you're going back on vacation again.

And magically if you do a Mommy Vacation, the next day when your baby wakes up at 6:30 or screams at you and throws food, it isn't quite as hard to handle. You seem happier, more patient, more forgiving and even more optimistic. Plus, everybody else seems to have fun having a break from Mommy too--at least for a while.


The Daddy Fort was such a success in fact that Chloe and Daddy had a sleepover in it's replica the following weekend. Thank you Greg. Although it would be nice to have a Mommy Vacation every month, I am grateful that I got at least one for now.