**Warning - if you are easily disgusted by bodily functions, you may want to skip this entry.

Ohhhh, where to begin on this trip.   This was a last minute, quickly thrown together trip for my spring break. I never really felt a strong desire to go to Amsterdam, but it was close, an easy drive, and Ben wanted to go to the Heineken Experience. I found a neat hotel in Leiden with a pool and kiddie play area, so I booked it and invited my neighbors and their two boys to come with us. The original plan was to leave early, stop at De Haar Castle, check in at the hotel, then go see the North Sea before calling it a night on the first day. The second day we would take the train to Amsterdam.

Well, the night before we were to leave, my less than 2 year old computer died for the second time. Completely shut off and would not turn on. I tried all the tricks that the tech guy told me the last time it died and none of them worked. I threw in the towel, upset and frustrated, and went to bed. In the morning we woke up later than planned so had to call our neighbors to postpone our departure. After a couple of hours in the car, we got a call to pull off at the next rest stop. The 1 year old got sick in the car. We couldn't 't find a gas station, so we pulled over at an old, fenced in building that looked like a prison to get him cleaned up.

As soon as we crossed the border I realized that I had neglected to pack our passports. I started freaking out. I had read about all these bad consequences that happen if you get caught traveling without your tourist passport. Our hotels in both Paris and Rome had asked to see our passports before checking in and I started picturing us getting the police called, a huge fine, or arrested! Ben told me to stop catastrophizing and calm down. If he had to, he would lie and say he was stationed in the Netherlands. That did not make me feel better.

After a few wrong turns (lots of construction up there), we made it to our hotel in Leiden. I sent Ben to check in, knowing I would not be able to lie and get away with it if it came to that. He came back to the car and fortunately, there were no problems, but our room wasn't ready.

I took the boys inside to play in the indoor playground past the lobby while Ben moved the car. We let the boys play and ate some lunch. After that, Ben went back to the counter to check on our room. This is where things got interesting.

Instead of running into the play area like Carson and the two neighbor boys, Maddox stopped dead in his tracks and whispered "I pooping" with this desperate look on his face. "What!?" I said, "right now?". I asked my neighbors to watch Carson, scooped up Maddox, and ran to the lobby bathroom.

I threw Maddox on the pot as fast as I could, but he started panicking because the seat was too big and he thought he was going to fall in. He would not sit all the way down. Then I started panicking, trying to push him down and reassuring him that I would hold onto him....until a golden stream headed right for my mid section. I let go and jumped out of the way. Maddox screamed and pee went everywhere for a few seconds until he finally lowered himself far enough to keep in it in the toilet. About a minute later there was a knock at the door. It was Ben. I opened the door and he was almost knocked out due to the smell. Our room was ready, so he took Carson and headed upstairs while Maddox finished up ( I finished wiping up the walls and floors...and sadly, my red coat).

Finally Maddox was stable enough to head upstairs. I threw his underwear in the garbage, a tragic loss because it was one of his favorite transformers. Thankfully his pants were spared, so he put those on while I checked the hallway to see if anyone was around. The coast was clear, so we quickly headed across the restaurant to the stairs. 

We were almost to the room when Maddox stopped walking. I was a few yards ahead of him before I noticed and turned around. By the look on his face, I knew it was happening again. I ran back, scooped him up, and sprinted to our room. I swung open the door, but tripped over this giant ledge in the doorway. I tossed Maddox in the room. Ben was lounging on the bed flipping through TV channels. Couldn't he sense the urgency in the air? I didn't understand why he didn't get up! So I yelled "Ben! Poop! Help!" This got him up and he swooped Maddox into the bathroom. He called my attention to a small trail of brown on the floor near the bathroom.   Great.  He cleaned up that one and I retraced our steps back through the hallway with a towel. Luckily that area was clear. Pretty soon Maddox was in the tub getting cleaned up and his clothes were in the sink rinsing.

After a few hours of rest Maddox seemed fine. We decided to continue with our original plans and head to Katwijk and visit the North Sea. Our neighbors didn't have a gps in the car, so they were going to follow us up there. It was only about 10 minutes away from our hotel. About halfway there we lost them. We drove around for a few minutes looking for them, calling their cell phones, to no avail. We figured the best plan would be to drive back to the hotel.  Thankfully they had the same idea.  On the second try, we made it to our destination.  

We had to go uphill to get to the coast and parked next to a giant dam. The wind was blowing and it was quite chilly, but the salt air and sand was refreshing. There were some interesting sculptures along the boulevard before you headed down to the beach.   At the bottom of the boardwalk there was child play equipment. The three other children all ran to play on it, but Maddox just took a seat in the sand and looked sad. I went and sat next to him. He looked up at me and said "Mommy....I have to poop."  Ahhhhhhhh, I thought. I walked over to Ben and said, "I'm watching Carson, go handle that."
 
He looked at me dumbfounded, as if saying "What am I supposed to do?" But, since he is super-husband, he picked up Maddox and started looking for a solution to this problem while I took Carson down to the shoreline to enjoy the water. I looked back and saw them heading into a nearby restaurant. Good man.

About 15 minutes later, they still hadn't joined us. I walked into the restaurant to check on them just as Ben was opening the bathroom door. I received the death stare.   Apparently, both restrooms were occupied and Maddox wasn't too successful at "holding it". Ben had to wash his underwear in the sink and while he was cleaning up, his hat fell in the toilet (so that had to be washed, too). To top it off, we started walking to the car and Ben realized he left his phone in the bathroom.   

On the car ride home I offered to stay home with the kids the next day if Maddox wasn't feeling better. Ben was really looking forward to the Heineken Experience, and, let's be honest, I owed him big time for the beach incident. But around 9 the next morning, Maddox seemed to be back to normal, so we took a chance and all headed out together to Amsterdam.

We parked at a park-and-ride lot outside the city ring. It was super easy to find and the metro was easy to get to. We rode it all the way in to the main train station. We had two things that were "must-do's" on the list today: 1.) Heineken Experience 2.) canal cruise. My neighbor and I went to buy the cruise tickets at the dock, but a hop-on, hop-off canal ride was the same price, and it drops you off just down the street from the Heineken museum. So, instead of messing with the metro and bus routes we thought this would be an easier choice. Kill two birds with one stone kind of thing.  

We didn't really comprehend how complicated it would be to get up and down the steps of the dock and the boat with 4 children (ages 4 and under), two diaper bags, and two heavy double strollers multiple times. The first loading up of everyone went ok. We were early, so the boat was empty. We put the strollers in the back and got a great seat in the middle. Getting off did not go as smooth. Neither did getting back on the second time when the boat was overflowing with people.  

The Heineken Experience was a lot of fun. We didn't have time to sit and read about all the displays or really relax with four screaming children running up and down the hallways. But, what we did see was interesting and the included beer samples helped to take the edge off the chaos.

Afterwards we walked the area looking for food. Surprisingly there were not many places to eat in the immediate vicinity. We found a doner place with outdoor seating, so we grabbed some hot dogs and french fries for the kids. Some of the food ended up on the ground, some tempers flew, and some tears were shed, but that is to be expected when traveling with such a large group of little ones. 

We loaded everyone back up into the strollers and walked back to the dock to catch the next boat.  That scheduled boat never came....neither did the next one.  We kept the boys busy by talking about all the things we saw in the canal, and of course, I was stressed out the whole time thinking one was going to fall in. Forty minutes later a boat finally arrived to pick us up and it was packed! There was no way we were waiting for the next one, though. We squeezed on, probably giving some other passengers bruises while bumping into them with the double strollers.  Carson was asleep in my arms and while I was carrying him, headed to the back, his foot whacked someone in the head as we were passing. I apologized, but he really should have been paying attention. We were all separated around the boat, but at the next stop a bunch of people got off and we rearranged before the next group got on.  

We decided it would be too exhausting to try to get off and on again, so we rode this boat all the way back to the train station. The houses were interesting and the views were beautiful. We struggled to get off the dock at the last stop, bought some souvenirs, and called it a day. There were a lot of other things we wanted to see, but I was cold and tired, and we had promised Maddox a trip to the swimming pool at the hotel. Better to save those other things for another trip than to travel around during the "witching hour" with screaming children.  This trip is a great example of how traveling with small children can be anything but glamerous.   You have to make the decision to laugh instead of cry, and sometimes all you can ask for is to survive!+ 

Amsterdam was beautiful and so is the Netherlands. The many canals and windmills made the drive pleasant. I was really surprised by how much water there was and loved how there was no need for fences to keep livestock in the field because they were fenced in by water. I'm looking forward to traveling back in a few weeks on our girls' trip to Keukenhof.