Sunday Haiku: First World Problems

Beach house. Open floor
plan. Thin walls.  Hollow core doors.
Good luck sleeping in.

Vacation with/from your kids

Beach house porch photo shoot outtake

Warning: this post contains what could be construed as complaints about a beach vacation with healthy, happy children in a free country full of economic opportunity.  It may not be suitable for all readers.

For a primary parent, vacation can be tricky.  Those who work full time might be really excited by the novelty of spending a lot of time with their kids on vacation.  When one already spend a lot of time with one's kids, the first morning of vacation makes one say "wait a minute...".  


I will not be able to replace this opportunity to spend lots of time with the boys when they're young.  I do my best to appreciate what I have and enjoy them through their developmental stages.  At the same time, a big aspect of being the main home and kids guy is that I keep the household routines running.  That means I serve the kids breakfast and help them remember all the steps it takes to be ready for the day.  And I do that most every day.  When we got on vacation this year, I realized that all of that stuff still needed to get done but that if I did it on vacation, I wouldn't feel quite like I'd gotten a break.  Because it caught me unawares (and because I'm the kind of terrible person who can find something on a beach vacation to complain about), I didn't communicate about it very well.  Eventually, Paige and I had a brief conversation about and she kindly took on as much of that stuff as she could.  Because she's better at sleeping in than I am but gets fewer chances to do so, I still often got up with the boys in the morning.  She basically handled all of every bedtime routine.  She also took on the ritual de-sanding in the outdoor shower with them.


One thing that parents can get a break from on vacation is enforcing every single rule that pertains at home.  There's a famous story from my wife's childhood about her father trying to make her eat vegetables while on vacation.  Her grandmother contradicted him, saying that certain rules just don't apply on vacation.  We've adopted that philosophy to some extent, although there was some meal-wrangling this year.  We certainly let the kids rot their brains on SpongeBob on vacation (more on that in a later post), which made it easier for us to relax.


It's not rocket science that the composition of one's daily/weekly routine affects how one defines the markers of vacation.  I guess I'm just slow on the uptake.

Vacationland

2 boys, 1 dad, 6 days, 5 nights, 1,463 miles.

That was the formula for a road trip to my parents' summer cottage in Maine last week. I did the math early in the summer that with my part-time schedule, I could leave on Tuesday for a 5 night trip while using only one vacation day. The fact that Paige would have to stay and work and that this would be a solo parenting adventure? I was up for that; it seemed like a neat reversal of the '60s era "mom takes the kids to the Hamptons while Dad stays in Manhattan" family arrangement. Quite downmarket, of course, taking a 12-year-old Honda Accord to a 6-room bungalow in a honky tonk Maine beach town, but similar nonetheless.

Highlights (in some cases distinguishable from lowlights only via perspective)

• Packed the brand new portable DVD player. Yay! Packed no DVDs. Boo! Borrowed DVDs from the cousins for the return trip.
• Missed the Van Wyck expressway in Queens at 11 pm, 375 miles into the trip. Boo! Eventually got to my sister's apartment for a toasty heat wave night followed by a tasty IHOP breakfast. Yay! C concluded from overhearing me tell his mother's voice mail that I'd "f-bombed my way across Queens" that "to f-bomb" means "to drive really fast". More later.
• Three beach days - in Maine, one cold and windy, one hot and windy - and so crowded! I forget that about the Maine beaches - in Massachusetts, a fun afternoon at the Camp Wonderland waterfront. My sister-in-law runs the camp, and my bro and his family live at camp for the summer. In the car on the way home, after three days at the beach, T demanded repeatedly to go to the beach. He got used to that lifestyle pretty quickly.
• On the way home, we made great time from Boston to the western side of the Tappan Zee Bridge. Then we hit some traffic. Then we crossed into New Jersey. And I'm not going to blame New Jersey for this, but T threw up all over himself and his carseat. And some luggage. And his brother's leapster video game. All the napkins I'd saved at our meal stops came in handy as I sopped up what I could with them. Once we were finally back underway, C said "now we're really going to have to f-bomb it across Pennsyvlania to make it home in time for dinner."
  

Freezing cold Maine beach day - towels become blankets. The boys flank their cousin Riley.

Short sleep in strange places catches up with Teddy.And with Charlie
How many cousins can fit in the golf cart? Charlie was asking Riley about the golf cart at camp, and she said "they just call it a golf cart; you don't actually play golf in it."