Family Vacation

After Ella was born, we did a lot of traveling with her.  We went to weddings, to the beach with friends and family, and even on a 1800+ mile roadtrip through the midwest to visit family.  What we didn't do much, though, was take trips solely for relaxation and new adventure.  That means not combined with business, not to visit friends or family but just somewhere to relax and have fun with our little family.  We remedied that situation in January 2010 when we took Ella to Key West for a long weekend.  We found a lovely resort with beautiful pools and a private beach that was nice enough to feel like a well-deserved vacation for Josh and me, but was kid-friendly enough that we didn't feel bad bringing an 18-month old along.  Without a car, we just walked everywhere on the island, enjoyed that every restaurant has outside dining, and reveled in watching Ella talk to the roaming roosters and cats in Key West.  This was a trip that stayed with us for a long time after we got home.   In the busy days of that year, the lovely memories of traveling with our new family, enjoying the pace of a child in a new location, and of course the perfect weather, were something we both drew on to remind us that sometimes there is more than diaper changes and dishwasher emptying.

Key West, 2010

Let's fast forward a year and a half, and now we have two children.  We keep talking about how we want to go back to Key West.  We talk about this for months.  We look into flights and balk at having to pay for a seat for Ella.  We think about all four of us sharing a hotel room and we balk.  We think about all of the gear we'll have to schlep along (car seats, pack and play, stroller, and so on) and we don't just balk, we completely abandon and say we'll plan to go with the kids are older and need less stuff.

But then a month or so later, Josh decides he hasn't lost the dream, figures out a way to get us into two connected oceanfront rooms without breaking the bank, finds a shuttle service with carseats that will take us from the airport to our hotel (the only time we actually need the blasted seats), and determines that the hotel has cribs.  Suddenly the sleeping situation and the gear-lugging problem have been resolved.  The trip is on!

The fall and winter fly by and we stumble out of the Thanksgiving-Dash birthday-Hanukkah-Christmas-Sarah Birthday-New Year craziness to discover that we're leaving on vacation in just a few weeks.  I briefly panic about all of the packing and then remember that I detest the airline checked baggage fees and therefore will be packing ONE, yes that's right ONE, suitcase for the four of us.  If it doesn't fit, we'll buy it there or live without it.

Early, oh very early, on a Wednesday morning, we pack up the car and our sleepy kids and head off to the airport.  We've gone totally practical - instead of a cute tote for me or one of his nice business travel bags, Josh and I are both sporting overstuffed backpacks dug out of the closet from our grad school days, stashed with snacks, coloring books, and diapers.

The highlight of the flights was landing in Key West.  The lowlights were much of the time between take-off in Raleigh and said landing.  Notable low moments included Dash deciding to be the baby who doesn't nap on planes and the giant barf from Ella during the Raleigh to Atlanta portion of the trip.  We're not sure what happened - excitement, too much water, motion sickness - but it was a giant mess, and worst of all, in all of my packing parsimony, I had elected not to bring a change of clothes for Ella on the plane.  As Ella rightfully said "Mommy, throwing up doesn't smell very good."  While Josh walked Dash around the Atlanta airport to get him to take a catnap in the Ergo, Ella and I went in search of replacement clothing which came in the form of a giant pink Atlanta t-shirt.

So we arrived in Key West looking a little less polished and smelling a little more rank than I would have hoped.  And the rooms at the resort weren't ready yet so we spent the first hour by the pool with Ella wearing nothing but her giant Atlanta t-shirt.

Poolside in pink

Fortunately, everything looked up from there.  Our rooms were lovely with a view of the ocean and balconies where Josh and I could relax after the kids went to sleep.  Even better, in the early morning when the children woke up, we could watch the sunrise and then watch the diggers drag around the sand to make everything picture perfect for another day in paradise.

  Early morning art while the sun rises

Diggers on the beach!  Such excitement for the kids

One thing that we have learned about traveling with our kids is that everyone will be happier if we stick to their schedule.  So rather than give in to the temptation to stay up later for a nice dinner or to skip a nap for more beach time, we dutifully put Ella and Dash down for naps and bedtime at their normal times, ate meals at their normal (read: early) times, and generally let their needs guide our activities.  Of course since Dash naps from 9:30-11 and 1:30-3:00 and then goes to bed at 6 pm, we had short increments of time to work with.  Unlike our previous trip where we explored the entire length of Duval Street, this time we barely made it a third of the way down on any given outing.

One of our favorite places to go is Blue Heaven, a funky restaurant with a huge outdoor courtyard (I don't even know if they have inside seating) with roaming roosters and cats.  I suppose some people might find this mixing of food, fowl, and feline offensive, but I choose instead to focus on how much these animals entertain my children.  We have never seen Dash so happily occupied at a restaurant.  The happier he was, the longer I got to linger over my lobster benedict and that is a good thing.

Dash: Ey-yah!  Cack!  Cack! 

Translation:  Look, Ella, there are roosters!  Roosters!

We spent a lot of time at the pool and on the beach and on the lawn just exploring.  I know we spend time just being present with the children at home but there is always the lingering need to run a load of laundry or check work email.  On this trip, we just got to enjoy long stretches of playtime which made the all of the challenges of traveling with the kids feel really worth it.

Water baby

Playing in the sand on the beach.

In the yard with Daddy

At home, our kids don't share a room so it was entertaining to see how they handled being in the same space during naptime and bedtime.  We don't even really notice it but in his own room back home, Dashiell often wakes up about 6 a.m. and just talks and plays in his crib for a good hour.  Unfortunately for Ella, he did this on vacation, too, and it woke up her up every day.  One of the things she told everyone when we got back was that "Dashy woke me up when we slept in the same room."

 

 

So was it relaxing?  Only a little.  Was it fun?  Very much.  Would we do it again?  Absolutely.

Growing Foods

There is a popular book in the mommy circles about feeding your child called "Feeding with Love and Good Sense" by Ellen Satter.  The premise is basically that it is the job of the parent to provide healthy meals with plenty of options and it is up to the child to eat whatever they want from what is offered.  There is no bribery in "Good Sense", no 'no thank bite', no 'eat your veggies so you can have dessert'.   In theory, I love this book and in practice, I have used a lot of the advice with good results in feeding my kids.  I try really hard not to get upset with the rejection of everything green or to worry too much about things like scurvy.  But sometimes I catch myself pulling an act that is definitely not Feeding-with-love-and-good-sense approved.  Example A would be the recent donut bribe chart that Ella and I created.

It all started over breakfast one morning when Ella told me that she wanted to go out for donuts.  Without even thinking much about it (or about how Ellen Satter would shake her head in disappointment at me), I told Ella that if she ate ten fruit and vegetable "growing foods" in the next five days, we would go out for donuts.

Ella was thrilled with this proposition and even more thrilled to make a chart to document each growing food that she ate.  Over the course of the next few days, she sometimes drew (or more often asked one of us to draw) each of her growing foods, and by the end of the week she had filled in the last box.  You can imagine that donuts were procured very quickly after that.

Was this a successful operation?  I have no idea.  Maybe she ate a few more vegetables than she would have without the bribe but maybe not.  Maybe now she has been ruined into believing that eating vegetables is the chore she must endure to get the reward of a massive sugar hit.  Maybe (probably) I'm overthinking the whole thing and should just shut up and eat my donut.  And, yes, I ate my growing foods, too.

Sleeping with a small person

You only have to be pregnant for about two seconds with your first child before the sleep comments begin from well-meaning (or not) friends and strangers alike. 

"Get your sleep now because you'll never sleep again!" 

"I haven't had a good night's sleep in 18 years!"

Sadly, this fear-mongering about sleep is actually based in a great deal of truth based on my experiences during pregnancy (the insomnia seemed especially cruel during my second pregnancy when I knew the sleepless infant nights were coming soon but not yet actually happening) and of course in the early days of the infant-who-is-hungry-all-night-long.  But Josh and I have been very very lucky in the sleep department.  Both of our kids have found their sleep rhythm sometime in the second part of the first year and there are many nights when we enjoy a solid 12-13 hours of kid-free quiet in our house.  These days, Dash's little brain is growing so fast that he can sleep 13-14 hours without a peep.  Lately, we are much more likely to hear from Ella in the middle of the night.

Her night wakings are generally because she needs something.  Her pillow needs to be rearranged or she's lost a stuffed animal under the covers.  Recently, Josh was called upstairs to Ella's room at 2 a.m. to find that what she wanted was a hug.  When I heard the story in the morning, I thought this was adorable.  He did not. 

One thing that we have never done with our children is to sleep with them in our bed.  Every parent out there knows this is a hot button issue and I'm not straying into any commentary here on whether it's a good or bad thing.  I'm just stating, for the blogging record, that we have never co-slept with our kids.  I suspect this is largely because our kids have been good sleepers in their own beds from the very beginning and we haven't wanted to rock the boat.  Sleep is important, remember?  You go with what works!

But I have always wanted to snuggle with my kids at night.  I go into their rooms to kiss them before I go to bed and I just want to crawl in with them.  So when Josh was out of town a month ago and Ella woke up about 12:30 a.m., I decided to take the plunge.  I asked her if she wanted to come get in my bed. 

And so the sleeplessness began.

Part of the initial problem was that she was so excited to get to sleep in my bed that all she could do was sit up and grin at me every time I looked at her.

She wiggled around and around and around. 

She rearranged all of the pillows multiple times.

She admonished me when I turned my back to her. "Mommy, I need to see your face!"

About 2:30 a.m. (neither of us had yet gone to sleep), she sat straight up and said "I'm going to get some books!  Let's read!"

Finally we must have fallen asleep because the next thing I remember is waking up at 6 a.m. on the very edge of the bed with two bony little knees in my back.  How can a 3-foot tall child take up my space in bed than my six-foot tall husband??  Annoyed, I drifted back to sleep, only to wake up a half hour later to a wide-awake girl smiling up at me.  The night was clearly over.

Boys

At dinner tonight, we had the following discussion:

Ella: At school, Mommy, I like to sit next to the girls during snack time.  But there are only 5 girls and 7 boys in my class.  So they make us sit boy, girl, boy, girl.  But I don't like sitting next to the boys.

Me: Why not?

Ella (totally serious):  Because they shoot me.

And we're done with listening to NPR in the car

One of the things I have missed the most since having kids is uninterrupted time to listen to NPR in the car.  I used to commute a half hour between our house in Durham and the UNC campus when I was working on my doctorate and I loved that time to listen to all the great shows on our local NPR station.  Weekend errands were even better when I got to listen to Car Talk, Splendid Table, and Wait Wait Don't Tell me.  Now of course I spend most of my car time listening to Raffi or Kindermusik or other Ella-approved music.  Sometimes I try to sneak in some NPR by convincing Ella to share the radio with me.  We'll listen to her music on the way to the store and my news on the way back.  This sometimes works but I don't find it very much fun to listen to All Things Considered with a constant stream of "I don't like news.  Is your turn over yet, Mommy?  I don't like news." My new tactic is to give her my cell phone where she can listen to Toddler Radio on Pandora in the backseat while I listen to NPR in the front seat.  I thought this was working rather well until a conversation we had this morning.  I was listening to Weekend Edition and they were reporting on the death of Whitney Houston at age 48.  I have often wondered how much of the news Ella picks up and whether I need to start censoring certain more disturbing stories for her.  I now know the answer.

Ella:  Mommy, Omar's Daddy died.
Me:  I'm so sorry to hear that.
Ella:  Yeah, he was 48 when he died.

Aaaannnnd, we're back to Raffi.

The remote

I don't think there's a child in the world who doesn't think that the television remote is the greatest toy on earth.  So many buttons!  After endless cycles of hiding the remote from them and then not being able to find it when I actually want to watch television, I finally gave in to letting my kids play with the remote this week.  I have never seen them so focused.  Why can't real toys achieve this level of obsession?

The OTHER hour

Do you know what the opposite of the Me Hour is?  The hour leading up to dinnertime.  Some people call it the witching hour, others the arsenic hour.  Whatever you call it, it's alive and well at our house and about to make me lose. my. mind.  Most afternoons, I find myself rolling in about 4:45 or 5:00 with two tired and hungry kids and one tired and hungry mama.  Since I work in the mornings, I get to spend afternoons out and about with the children.  This is a privilege, I know, and I try to spend this time doing fun things with the children rather than dragging them on yet another trip to Target.  But however enjoyable our afternoon destination has been - a fun playgroup meeting, a workout at the gym for me while the kids play in the childcare room, a visit with friends, or a walk to the park - I start to feel the dread of the dinner hour as we head back towards our house.  I love to cook but even with the best laid dinner plans (menu ready, ingredients prepared, kitchen surfaces at least semi-clean enough to find room to cook on them - and that's of course only on a very well-organized day), I still find cooking dinner with small children around to be highly stressful.  Ella is usually very clingy at this time of day, sometimes literally hanging off my legs, and at her most unwilling to occupy herself.  Dash is just hungry and insistent (i.e. LOUD) and at that miserable toddler phase of eating where he wants only two bites of any one thing and then very dramatically throws the offending third bite onto the floor.  So between trying my hardest to be patient with Ella's endless questions and uncanny knack for being underfoot wherever I go in the kitchen, Dash's massive mess and ear-piercing grunts for things I just don't understand, and oh, yeah, actually trying to cook a decent meal, I am not the bright, cheerful mother I would like to be when we finally sit down to eat dinner together as a family.  I like to think that by eating together as a family I'm protecting my kids from all the terrible things that the research says a family dinner protects against, but I'm not sure whether those analytic models include a factor for a grumpy, short-tempered mother at the table.