We’re in Washington DC…what time is it?

There is a rule, unwritten until now, that while adults will use vacations as an opportunity to sleep several hours later than they are accustomed to do while on vacation (thereby distinguishing a vacation from just any other old day) children will wake up earlier, sometimes appallingly so.

Today Tommy awoke just before five, and since he and Teddy are sharing a bed, well, you know what happened. This means that by the time we made it to the Smithsonian from our hotel in Georgetown they had both already been awake for five hours.

In spite of this, we did have a great 90 minutes in the National Air & Space Museum. I took Tommy to a planetarium show about collisions in space that blew both our sleep-deprived minds – did you know that the moon was formed in 30 days? Tommy was also thrilled to stand inches away from the plane the Wright brothers flew and to watch computer-enhanced films of their first four successful flights.

But before we had a chance to see the entire museum, Tommy asked if he could go outside to “get his wiggles out” (a phrase used by his teacher, bless her). When we got out onto the Mall, he proceeded to run spastically around the way only an exhausted 6-year-old can while Teddy flopped in his stroller as if his legs had stopped working. I looked at them both and realized there was no way I was keeping them down there until the late afternoon as I had originally planned (especially since I would be doing the afternoon and evening solo – Matt is here for a conference). I jettisoned the visit to the cool tacqueria up on Capitol Hill and a jaunt through the National Portrait Gallery and instead we headed back to our hotel.

After long naps, they were both in better shape, but it was of course too late to head back downtown. So we walked along the towpath that lines the canal in Georgetown. It was a beautiful golden afternoon, unseasonably warm. The path was full of college kids doing what they do – making out, lying asleep, running. So much youth and vigor and beauty and freedom made me almost want to weep but my two grumbled along like little old men. Teddy was especially opinionated calling it a “boring” canal and a “boring” city and only displaying enthusiasm when a plane would fly low overhead (which, happily for him, happened every two minutes as it is the flight path for Reagan National). Tommy asked when he was going to get to go to an art museum. And I thought longingly about the chic shops lining M Street and sighed.

Don’t feel too bad for me. Tomorrow is a new day. And we’ve told Tommy in about ten different ways that if he wakes up and it is still completely dark out he is not to move.