Fiona was excited all day Friday after we told her we were going to see Grandma and Papa in the Berkshires for Father's Day weekend. Since she associates putting on shoes with leaving the house, from the moment I got home from work she kept asking if she could put on her shoes. Since we still had to pack, eat dinner and give her a bath, we spent a lot of time asking her to put her shoes away.
Once those jobs were done, I headed out load up the car... and realized it wouldn't start. Under ordinary circumstances I would have uttered an expletive or two and headed back upstairs, figuring I'd get some sleep and call AAA the next morning. But you can't tell a two-year-old who's been excited to go on a trip all day that you're suddenly delaying the trip until the next morning, so we waited around for an hour to get a jump and had a very late night driving up to the mountains. Fortunately Aunt Kathy was around to entertain Fiona.
As it turned out, the car problem leaving was mere prelude to the return trip. On Monday afternoon as we merged onto the Hutch heading for the withstand the front passenger tire blew out. Three hours into the trip, twenty minutes from home. In 95 degree heat. With rush hour fast approaching. And (of course) a toddler in the back seat whose brief nap had just rudely ended with the flat tire.
We waited about half an hour for the tow truck and then had to clutch Fiona on our laps in the truck cab (there not being any strictly legal option--Fiona couldn't ride in the towed car, and the truck cab couldn't accommodate a car seat, not that she's supposed to be in the front seat anyway). Fortunately we had a cooler full of food from the Berkshires, and Fiona's normal reaction to seeing her parents' stress is to cling closer to whichever parent is nearby rather than throwing a fit.
By the time we were done spending a couple hundred to get towed and get a new tire rush hour had arrived in full force, which meant another 60-75 minutes to go the final few miles home. Needless to say, Monday evening turned into a kind of "no rules" night, as we just let Fiona run around until well after her bedtime, happy to be out of a car and back with her old toys. Oh, and Daddy was happy to be able to crack open a beer while Mommy enjoyed being able to collapse on the couch. So much for a restful weekend.
Fiona knows how to express her displeasure; she is, after all, terribly two. But on Monday, when she could so easily have lashed out in frustration at the heat, the confinement, and the traffic, she was an angel. If that's not worth a late bedtime I don't know what is.
