LAS VEGAS – Travelling with kids taught me to load up on caffeine and to constantly check my patience meter.
It’s a Friday here in Vegas. I seriously don’t know if it’s September 25 or 26. We’ve been mobile since we got here on the 17th in a sequence that has wrecked havoc on my body clock, study habits, and whatever ability I have left to serve as mother and wife to the mutants and Jeff.
We’ve been flying and driving, and flying and driving – repeat five times – and I can’t even tell you how tired I am of being in an airport and (pardon me) watching flight attendants close overhead bins.
I have mastered the art of carrying two kids: one weighs 12 kilos; the other 11. I think I will become a bodybuilder soon after I get rid of my belly fat.
Packing, repacking, and unpacking bags is my current hobby. I love it and I hate it. Rearranging clothes, shoes, accessories in a suitcase is not fun; but I like that triumphant feeling when I am able to fit one million knick-knacks in a small trolley.
Washing milk bottles, preparing the baby bag, counting how many diapers we need for a three-hour drive or a 90-minute flight are second to nature now. Jeff is a great partner. He’s been washing bottles in the last three days as I focus on finishing two essays for my MA and studying for an upcoming exam.
I have never mixed vacation with kids and studies. It is a major challenge. I can’t even enumerate the things I have to do everyday to make this work because I will sound like a hyena on steroids. You won’t like that. I won’t like that too (although, obviously, I am whining to my heart’s content).
My back hurts terribly. My right toe is sore; I am more than sure it’s because of an ingrown nail. The twins have colds.
The good thing is: Antoinette’s appetite for food is changing for the better. She used to be the picky eater but since this travel began, she has been a voracious consumer of anything we feed her. I am surprised she can even finish a plateful of fluffy scrambled egg that she used to spit out back in Guangzhou. As for Nick, well, he eats anything. In fact, he doesn’t stop eating.
Yesterday’s buffet lunch at the Wynn Las Vegas with Jack and Angel Allen was marked with the twins’ walking around the restaurant with wide smiles on their faces, clearly pleased with themselves.
Last night, we made history. The mutants didn’t cry AT ALL when we put them to sleep in their cribs. It was 9:00 p.m. We just returned from a very interesting, intellectually-stimulating dinner with Jeff’s college bestfriend Kyle and his wife Julia and we hoped that the mood won’t be dampened by high-pitch screaming c/o the mutants.
They didn’t fail us.
Toni got up and babbled something, touched my face and said: “Mama, mek (milk).”
Nick was in a cocoon. The brown blanket embraced his bulky figure. He looked like an oversized spring roll. Too cute. Really.
We’re moving to the California part of this trip. Five days in LA/Newport Beach with a Disneyland visit. I am looking forward to meet my college classmate, Ivy Ma, there.
Packing bags. Again.
See you in Cali!
