Returning to a city where you used to live is a bit like entering a time warp. Everything seems oddly familiar yet somehow different. This weekend hubby and I returned to our college town of Jacksonville, Florida where we spent time catching up with friends and showing our girls around our old home. We have not been back in nearly 3 years so it was all new for both girls (Honeybun remembers nothing about the other three times she came at 3, 15 and 21 months). We returned to our alma mater and drove the girls through, pointing out all the places we used to live and where we used to have class. We visited the bookstore (and did run into one of my professors) and got each of the girls a book and Sugarplum declared “I wanna go to Co-llege.”
Due to extreme circumstances (Hubby had a meeting one day and a stomach bug the next), I spent a lot of time out and about by myself with the girls. As we sat places having a snack or eating meals, I found myself expecting someone I knew to walk in the door at any moment. I don’t have these expectations at home and it’s weird that I kept having these thoughts while in Jacksovnille. We don’t have a whole lot of friends left in the city and it’s a HUGE city (largest city by population in Florida and largest by area in the entire US!) so realistically running into someone was extremely unrealistic but nonetheless, I kept my eye on the door (it also kept me entertained while the girls ate ridiculously slow as usual).
We ran out of things to do halfway through the 2nd day (I was trying to save the good things like the zoo for when daddy was feeling better) and we all started to get bored and lose our minds a little bit. Being in the hotel room was hard because hubby required immediate access to the toilet and having a potty-training toddler made this difficult. We also didn’t have a whole lot of toys (since we weren’t planning on being in the hotel that much) and the girls took to spending their time chasing each other around and making each other mad.
We did a lot of shopping (my hunt for shorts that fit continues…) which was nice at first but the girls quickly lost their attention spans and started chasing each other around and making each other mad (sound familiar?). By the middle of the 2nd day we were just plain bored. I was also left to eating out with them by myself. Food in the room was not an option (food smells=hubby vomit) and I tried to use as much time as possible. I tried taking them to some of my favorite places that we don’t have at home but many of them were gone and we ended up sticking to the chain restaurants (so much for something new).
Overall the girls were very good for me under the circumstances, but I will say I was more than happy when by day 3 daddy was feeling well enough to venture out with us. During this ordeal I realized that while being a stay-at-home mom is extremely difficult, being a stay-at-the-hotel and alone-with-the-kids-in-a-different-city mom is even harder. Usually I really like travelling and find we argue as a family less, but I can actually say this time that I am glad to be home!
