Still digging out...

First, before I start to moan on and on about how hard it is to live a life of endless vacations, here are a few more highlights of our time in Spain. Ahhhhh...the life we all need to have at least 3 weeks a year.

Now for the moaning.  I'm not sure why, but this summer's end kind of slammed me in the face. Maybe it was the disastrous re-entry to East Coast Time Zone (my new post-flight motto: NEVER let them nap) or the fact that I'm just not as young and able as I once was (no laughter, please). But if the grueling 8 hour amuse-a-cranky-toddler trip itself didn't kill me, the first week home almost did. It was, in a word, rough. I couldn't get Carolina back on track since her horrible first night's 3 p.m. bedtime. Why on earth I thought that it would be okay for all of us to nap at 3 p.m. and not just push through a few more hours awake, I'll never know. Actually, part of the blame goes to our earlier than usual arrival time. We made it back Stateside around 12:30 p.m. instead of 2ish. And that made a huge difference in the rest of the day. We were up earlier to get to the airport, and by the time we'd made it to NYC, everyone was well beyond exhausted. There wasn't the usual rebound of seeing new toys and just relaxing a bit. We crashed. Hard. By the time I woke up in a haze at 7:30 p.m., I knew things were awry. Carolina could not be roused, and Elisa was a beast that did not care if Dora was on. She kept falling back asleep on the couch despite the blare of TV, lights and dinner under her nose.  By the time I got her up and back to bed around 10 p.m., I knew my night was just starting. I hit the pillow around 11 p.m. and just like clockwork, Carolina was up for the day at 1:20 a.m. Oh yes. It was a nightmare. But little by little we got that moved forward and by the time I bolted from the city again on Friday, Nacho wasn't completely screwed. The girls have both been waking early (between 5-6 a.m.) but luckily they are sleeping better overall.  So that's the foundation for my total mental exhaustion and this nasty sinus infection I seem to have developed over the weekend is just the icing on the cake. I just have no ambition to do anything or clean up this mess, or even blog or bake. It's awful.  But soon I will be back to my old self and then it will be time to hit the beach in NC. Yes, we have more vacation to conquer. Thankfully, this one is in the same time zone. More soon.