All right, let's talk about yesterday...
So as I said, Croc Encounters was awesome, but Auggie had a hard time. This is a lot to ask of a kid who is a)not as obsessed with crocodilians as his big brother and b)sensitive to sensory overwhelm like heat, crowds (even if the absolute number is low, but there are just too many people within a square mile of him), and stinky alligator pits. It's not a super long tour, maybe a little more than an hour, but he was done.
Our plan for the day was to go from Croc Encounters to St. Petersburg and spend the afternoon and today and a pretty cool resort there on the beach. We have friends in the area that we would have liked to have seen, but that was always going to be a stretch.
Here's what actually happened... we didn't get lunch after Croc Encounters. We should have. We had cold drinks in the car, but that wasn't enough. We let them have tablet time in the car, but we probably didn't give them enough warning that it was time to turn them off. Our room wasn't ready, but the pool was. We took hot kids out into the heat without a clear idea of where the pool changing area was. Auggie had a big meltdown. I had a half meltdown. Sam and Lyle both had half meltdowns independent of mine and Auggie's. There were too many people around too small of a pool (especially in comparison to the destination level pool from the previous hotel). I took Auggie back to the car, where we sat in blazing heat ignoring each other and playing on our devices because we were mad and dysregulated. Sam and Lyle came back to the car. We decided to bail entirely on what should have been a pretty nice place to hang out and one I'd put some effort into finding and arranging. We got Chick Fil A. I called the resort in St. Augustine that I'd previously considered and they found us a room that worked for us. People got electronics and naps (except Lyle, who is obviously carrying the burden of his poor life choices here) and the situation slowly improved.
We got to the new hotel in time to get the kids in the pool. This pool, while not as big or cool as the one in Orlando, did meet their requirements. (Thank God!!). We got pizza delivered. Sam had his online math tutoring session. Everyone is speaking to one another again.
Tomorrow is another day (and it's a planned off day with no agenda beyond the pool).
If I had this to do over again, we'd have just stayed at the Orlando hotel and made the Croc Encounters a day trip (only about an hour's drive each way). The pool there was a major hit with the kids, the room was ideally suited to our needs, and we could have rented a cabana for the off day.
Obviously, feeding people in a timely fashion is important.
I kinda can't overstate my own frustration level with this, both in trying to manage the kids, in trying to manage myself (in reaction to the kids, but also just in general), in trying to raise kids who aren't total screen addicts while also recognizing that sometimes those screens are the only things that keep me from feeding them to the gators, in recognizing the level of privilege that we're just *squandering* here, and the failure in planning (a thing that I usually pride myself on).
Here's the pic I sent my sister when she told me it was amazing I was holding it together.
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