Let me preface this post by saying that I do sincerely love the primary characters of this story. From this point on, I will refer to my daughter as Scout (literary, not a military reference) and my niece as Munchkin.
At the end of June my sister, her nearly 4 year old daughter Munchkin, the wife, Scout, and I took a last minute trip to Florida to visit our family. For me, it was the first return since 2002, and it was the first time any of my extended family had the opportunity to meet Scout. Plus, I would get a chance to see a beach that doesn't require dry suits in the middle of summer, so spirits were high. This is all merely background, the inspiration for the title came on Friday, the third day of our visit.
As we were returning from visiting one set of my grandparents and returning to visit the other side of the family, Munchkin reached a peak in her play but fought sleep to the point of mental exhaustion. As we neared a McDonalds, her spidey sense kicked in and she voiced a need for McNuggets. I've learned that when Munchkin needs McNuggets, you get McNuggets, so I pulled into the drive thru and ordered McNuggets. Well, it turns out she didn't want the drink that accompanies a kid's meal, and asking for a Sprite was apparently the worst offense possible at the time. Meltdown begins. All questions directed at Munchkin from this point on were answered with a shriek, a wail, or a command to "ZIP IT!"
Luckily, I thought to myself, Scout is still sleeping...until I ran over a curb trying to speed out of the parking lot. Super. So, Scout begins crying crying because she's been jostled from a deep sleep. Munchkin is not interested in the crying competition, so she kicks up the volume to ensure her pleas and agony are heard. Scout responds in kind, mainly because she's under 4 months old and trying to figure why the Jeep is bouncing and people are screaming. The wife, meanwhile, is nestled in the backseat of the Jeep with Scout in a carseat on one side and Munchkin in a booster on the other side.
Thinking things must begin improving at some point, we continue onto the highway. We hit construction traffic. Normally, the drive would have taken 15 minutes, but as chance and misfortune would have it, it took 45. At some point, around the 20 minute mark, the wife put in ear plugs and we all (minus the little ones) started laughing. That really didn't help matters, but we had already fought through stress to irritation and settled in a comfy place of defeat.
I assumed that once we got home, the chaos would stop, but I was wrong. Munchkin continued the hysterics in the house, which involved some spitting, screaming, and streaking down the driveway in her birthday suit. Scout just continued to cry because that's all she can do, but she did so with fervor. My sister started recording the hysterics on her iPhone about 10 minutes in and forgot to turn it off, so she had half an hour of the ordeal in an audio file. It was great for proving to our families that the little girls were not always angels and our exhaustion was warranted.
At this point it was time to get dinner, and being the noble person I am, I bolted and praised the slow performance of the restaurant staff. Personally, I was hoping there might have been a Catholic church and a doctor's office nearby, because I was convinced that the two kids needed a priest and a pediatrician to rid them of whatever demons had taken hold.
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