So it's not something I would recommend to anyone else, but it turns out that spending 16 hours in the car with a 4-year-old and a 7-week-old is not unbearable. Both kids slept a lot, and we planned on having to stop a lot so it wasn't a surprise or a frustration when it happened. And both kids were good while we were there, a few Grandma-induced tantrums by Emily but the poor kid can't help it... she gets so many mixed messages between me having some semblance of discipline and my mother-in-law feeding her lollipops for breakfast.

My in-laws are their typical nightmarish selves. Father-in-law called us fat again - I swear I'm going to pull one of his ears off the next time he asks whether I'm SURE a double bed will be big enough for DH and me. And mother-in-law got on my case for breastfeeding - "You know, it IS kind of selfish... the rest of us could have more time with the baby if you would let him take a bottle." Bite me. And he DOES take a bottle - we brought a bottle of milk with us so that I could go out to breakfast with a friend, but my husband got stupid and gave it to Jacob before I ever left the house, which shortened my time out and let me come home to a screaming baby and an attitudinal mother-in-law. Yay.

But my husband’s grandfather was so happy we came, he cried at one point - and this was for a Navy reunion, so not exactly a tear-friendly kind of gathering! - and that was the whole point. And now I have a 3-week break, then we have to go to Maine to scatter father-in-law's mother's ashes (it took until this weekend for them to arrive from Holland). And I bet that will just be a barrel of monkeys, taking this already messed up family and adding in grieving and ceremony.

Bring on the monkeys!