Here’s the truth about traveling with little Littles: sometimes there just isn’t enough coffee to match your own energy with the energy they have after a morning of being stuck in the car.

Second truth: if you attempt to keep their sleep routines on a semi-normal track, even when staying in a hotel, you are setting yourself up for a lot of forced self-quiet time, too.

Take my afternoon and evening, for example:

That’s right. I am totally camped out in the tub of our hotel room, hiding from my children who are hopefully, possibly, maybe just maybe, sleeping in one queen bed, one pullout sofa bed, and two Pack-and-Plays in our actual hotel room. And since blue light is no good for sleepers, it is either put myself to bed a few hours early or do this – blog from the bathroom.

Seeing as I already napped once in the tub, I decided to go for blogging tonight instead.

What? Did I just admit that on the Internet? Yes, yes I did. And yes, yes I did.

After we rolled in to Pierre today, right at lunch time (for all) and nap time (for the two little boys), Ben took the Bigs to the pool and I pulled big fancy pillows from the bed and made a nest in the tub. Bizarre? Totally. But a tired mama will do what a tired mama will do, and there was only time for one cup of coffee before we left for four hours of driving/answering the question, “How many more towns are there?” in the whiniest voices possible (and followed by the biggest sighs ever when our answers didn’t change much because hi, it’s South Dakota. We have a lot of space between our towns, TYVM).

That makes it sound like I’m calling my kids bad travelers and actually they’ve handled everything pretty well so far, but what I can’t figure out is where they store all this energy. I swear. Where do they get it?!

Case in point: after the long, long pool run for HD and RL and a quick one for LT, we headed to my grandpa’s place to visit and have supper with him. And the children were literally bouncing off the furniture/walls pretty much the whole time we were there (Bless our host’s heart, he said he liked all of their energy)! Once we got back to the hotel and started getting beds set up for the Bigs, the bouncing off of things and each other continued, that is, until RL took a flying leap and smacked her knee something fierce on the metal frame of the sofa bed. I mean, her dad and I tried to warn her, but even the tiredest and most “I told you so” of parenting moments come with a big of heart string pulling when one of your babies gets hurt, don’t you think?

But now I’m just rambling, so maybe I should just finish this off, turn out the lights, and call it a very early night. #lifeinyour30s at its finest!