broken bikes & black eyes

"I don't feel nearly as bad about running over our son's bike with my car after you kicked our daughter in the eye."

I think that about sums up our family camping trip last week.

It was good fun, actually. I mean. You know. Considering the fact we had 7 kids 4-and-under in tow.

not a terrible view

We camped right on the beach and we were with our favorite friends and all the minis loved each other and played and played and flew kites and spent hours in the sun and sand and sea. Happy campers, literally.

little people, big kite.

One of my best friends Claire and I were pregnant with our first babies at the same time, lived a mile apart, and spent a lot of time together the first year of the kids' lives. The kiddos, Jack and Millie, were sweet little baby-BFFs. They later moved away, but we still manage to get the pipsqueaks together a couple times a year. One of DM's cousins has a PhD in child-something-or-other. She seems very wise. Recently she was talking about how children "imprint" on each other at a very young age, so even if they don't see each other often, they have these innate memories of one another.

And i feel like that must be true of these two because they get along like gangbusters when they see each other. Then there's Colby chasing after them like, "Hey guythz, wait up! Can i play too?" Poor nugget. Sadly, Jack was relegated to Millie's second fiddle when my friend DP's daughter "Button" joined the kid crew. Sorry, son. Best familiarize yourself with this feeling now. Let's revisit the issue in about ten years and talk about a little tactic called "playing hard to get" vs. "sobbing inconsolably because she doesn't want to sit next to you."

Anyway, within the parameters of family vacations, it was pretty perfect.

a beautiful mess

Though we did spend a night at the motel 6 in Lompoc, CA, which I hope was a once in a lifetime experience. *Shudder.* Colby did barf on the winding drive there. Apparently she shares her mother's propensity for motion sickness. I did expose my latent heteronormativity by asking Claire to pick up a coloring book with "boy stuff" for Jack (i.e., super heroes and ninjas versus the puppies and princesses we had on hand). DM did run over and destroy Jack's bike with the car. And I did kick Colby in the eye. (She was roasting a marshmallow and leaned too far forward in her cheapo camp chair and tipped toward the fire pit. She was out of arm's reach so I threw up my foot to stop her from falling into the flames... aaaaand, kicked her in the "eyebowl." She had a shiner and everything ;-/)

There were ruthless seagulls and fearless bees to contend with. And a bunch of brazen raccoons ransacked our camp the first night. They got into the coolers and broke/ate/tossed four dozen eggs all over the place so, not only did we not have anything for breakfast, we essentially got egged by rodents of unusual size. They destroyed a box of graham crackers, too, so at one point Claire resorted to making s'mores with tortilla chips. Coming soon to a Pinterest board near you ;) She tried to liken it to salted caramel but I wasn't buying it. And of course it wouldn't be a real family vacation without a sick kid. Colby was a total snot faucet the whole time, poor bug. I'm not sure a kleenex was used once. "Roughing it." Oh! And I got so much grief for my headlamp! You people don't know what you're missing!

BETTER than sliced bread. y'all are crazy. it is an incomparable tool for eating pizza in the dark, and other essential activities.

In spite of all that, though, the kids were on cloud nine. I remember one of the first times we took Jack camping, and after one day he was like, "Can we go home now?" But this time they both decided they want to live in a tent forEVAH! It was so cute. And though I've never been an advocate of the family bed, it is sorta fun to wake up all together in this cozy little cocoon. (I actually wish I'd taken a pic of our crooked cocoon. It was a sad, lopsided little thing, listing dangerously to the left, probably from the gale force winds that nearly blew us off the cliff into the ocean last time we went camping.) We even had themed dinners! And of course there's nothing like drinking beers around the fire with friends (once the kids are asleep and the threat of toasted children is no longer imminent). It can't be beat.

Oh YEAH. Also the part where we taught the littles how to play beer pong. RELAX. They didn't drink the beer or anything. They were just our ping pong proxies. I swear I read about it in Parenting Magazine or something. Teaches valuable skills like teamwork and hand-eye coordination. Anyway. Jack was a natural. Pretty sure we created a monster the second he sunk that first ball. His eyes fairly gleamed in triumph. We didn't think much of it at the time, but the next day we got onto the topic of "things you can do when you're 16," like drive a car (because DM also let him "drive" the car down to the camp store - permagrin!) DP asked, "what else are you going to do when you're 16?" and J says, "DRINK BEER!" Aaaaaand, we just created an alcoholic. Wonderful. Can't wait to hear how this gets translated to his teachers. Up until now we had duped the kids into calling anything alcoholic "gwown up dwink." I felt much safer cloaked in that gauzy ambiguity. Oh well!

Anyway, the point is, (mostly) good times were had by all. But. Holy shit, man. The amount of crap we brought? Unreal. I don't even know how we fit it in our car. My parents, who could hike for ten days with nothing but what they could carry on their backs, would be appalled. Seriously. I felt like I was preparing for The End of Days. And of course, we wouldn't want to venture to the end of days without our iPads. (Again, the shame! My mom and stepdad are rolling over in their graves. Even a year ago we SWORE this was something we'd never-ever do: camping and i-anything. But really by now we should know better than to say "I never.")

provisions for a normal human to survive for 4 months,
or my family to camp for 4 days 

precious cargo! it feels like we're forgetting something though.. 

And then there was the great glow stick fiasco of 2014. One night we handed out glow sticks for the kids. Jack and Colby both got green ones, and we fashioned them into necklaces with twine. But THEN. Jack noticed that Button had a PURPLE glow stick, with a soft black lanyard. OH, the injustice. THE HORROR. Well. Button's dad, JP, overheard the ruckus and assumed that it was Colby, not Jack, who was squealing like a stuck pig over a purple glow stick. So he managed to wangle a coveted purple stick out of thin air, and gave it to Colby. Oh dear lord. You can probably imagine where things went from there. Or maybe you can't, because your children are not psycho-beastie-babies. ANYWAY. Jack starts LOSING HIS EVER LOVING MIND because Colby got a purple glow stick and he didn't. Then he tries to snatch it from her, which of course sets Colby off. Talk about end of days. World War Z erupts and I promptly fireman-carried both children to bed. Colby finally decided to be the bigger person and trade her purple for his green, but naturally, that was TOTALLY insufficient, because jack wanted a purple glow stick with a BLACK necklace, not a scwatchy, twine necklace. "Everything is terrible. What is the point of going on??? HOW CAN I BE EXPECTED TO LIVE LIKE THIS?!?" (< I'm paraphrasing.)

Poor JP felt bad for exacerbating the histrionics but I assured him he could not possibly have anticipated the depths of my children's despair over WHAT COLOR GLOW STICK they received. I mean, come the f*ck on. After I finally got the crazies to sleep I was commiserating with my friends over the fire. Are we just raising complete and total terrors? I think the answer is pretty clearly yes. But everyone made me feel a tiny bit better, reminding me that they're just kids. (Though I feel like this is the same argument people use with extremely large puppies - oh, they're little, it's fine, and then suddenly you have a 300 pound dog leaving Everest-sized piles of poop on your bed and using your head as a tiny pillow.) Claire said "Your kids are kind, which is the most important thing, right?" ("Kind" with the caveat that they occasionally torture their parents, each other, and unsuspecting State Park patrons.) Or maybe that's just what delusional, overindulgent parents of spoiled little bratwursts tell themselves. But then JW reiterated my favorite parenting mantra: compared to the vast spectrum of shitty parents, we are most likely at the high end, e.g., only very slightly shitty. And then I felt pretty okay.

good thing they're so cute.

family vacation and other oxymorons

okay. this is a well-worn topic over here at cheesy-town, but that's not going to stop me from saying it again. traveling with children is (or can be): fun, adventurous, entertaining, rewarding, and worthwhile. traveling with children is not: relaxing, rejuvenating, restful, quiet, or serene. traveling with children is not a "vacation."

we went camping last weekend. and by "camping" i mean car-camping at a site overlooking the beach with hot showers and a well-stocked camp store 5 miles from our home and the nearest target. (my parents were actual, legit campers so i feel like i have to add that caveat as they're snickering at me from their perfectly pitched desolation wilderness camp in the sky). it was a really great trip. my brother and sister and her family came along, which was a special treat, and the kids barely lost their minds at all, which was a minor miracle. but i was just chuckling to myself about my mind's stubborn refusal to accept the fact that our lives have changed, a lot. not better. not worse. or, maybe, better AND worse. but mostly just ... different. :)

i had to work friday but DM took the day off to finish packing and setting up camp. i left him and my brother a list of last-minute things they needed to gather, including the following:


"other shinguard"
(jack had a soccer game saturday morning, and one of his shinguards had disappeared into the "other" black hole of children's things, along with other socks, other shoes, and other shreds of mom's sanity)

i also said on my way out, "oh, don't forget to bring cards and other grown-up games." see, in "the old days," DM and i vacationed like it was our job. these adventures usually involved secluded beaches and white sand and rum drinks and naps in the daylight hours. this was also in the era before cell phones and social media ruled our lives. we never watched TV or fell down our individual internet rabbit holes on our smart phones while sitting side-by-side. we played endless games of gin rummy and scrabble and backgammon and chess, and read books and listened to the waves or the wind in the trees. and there was no more perfect place for cards and games than on a camping trip. once DM had exhausted his four-song repertoire on the guitar, we would spend the evenings drinking wine out of plastic cups and playing travel scrabble or rummy by the firelight.

while i know, logically, that trips with the kids are very different than vacations from the days of yore, my subconscious is a little slow on the uptake. hence the request for an array of old-fashioned entertainment for our family camping trip. i get this selective amnesia every time we go on "vacation," and then i am reminded again of the reality that the days of reading on the beach or drinking cold beer while playing lazy games of poker by the campfire, or hell, even just sitting - i really miss sitting - those days are gone. or at least, on sabbatical. by the time we wrangle the crazy kidlets to sleep, which is no small feat when they're hopped up on s'mores and fresh ocean air, and finally succeed at exiting the tent (on the tenth try - our finely honed silent ninja skills seriously compromised - there is no "sneaking" out of a tent), we are so beat it's all we can do to keep our eyes open while we nurse our beers in stunned silence. scrabble?

that is not to say we didn't have a good time. we absolutely did. i think it was one of our most successful trips yet, despite the fact that we were nearly blown off the cliff into the ocean by gale-force winds friday, and spent the night in soggy tents and sleeping bags. but the definition of a good time has definitely been revised for the 21st century ;)

wind: 1, EZ-up tent: 0

"quick! someone take a picture of us! everyone act natural! hurry, before we have to return to our regularly scheduled routine of preventing small children from falling off the cliff into the ocean or getting run over by a car or burned in the campfire or stabbing each other in the eyeballs with marshmallow roasting sticks."

at the end of the day, though ... life is not terrible.

insert requisite inspirational family travel quote here:

"there are no seven wonders of the world in the eyes of a child. there are seven million." seeing the world again through the eyes of a child makes these harrowing, sweat- and snot- and tear-soaked adventures worth it. at least, that's what i keep telling myself ;)

[source: alexinwonderland.com]

just as soon as i recover and finish the laundry from the last one
[source: one kings lane]

the end

weekender

"It is better to travel well than to arrive." - Buddha

Well, shit. I'm basically screwed then because these days I consider it a successful trip if we all manage to arrive at our destination in one piece without attracting the attention of TSA, FAA, CPS, SDPD, or any other acronym that could land my ass in jail.

Anyway.

Before DM and I started a family, we loved to travel, and we swore that (among many other things) we wouldn't let having kids slow us down. Not only did we want to continue to explore, we hoped to foster the same wanderlust and sense of adventure in our children. We wanted them to see and appreciate life beyond the bounds of their own backyard.

And that's all well and good. But. Holy Mary Mother of God. Have you tried traveling with children? There's no two ways about it. Traveling with kids slows you down. Like, a lot. I mean, take the amount of time and baggage you think you'll need, and multiply it times three. Or maybe five. I'm not saying we've changed our aspirations, or that we can't still achieve them, but like most things having to do with children, it's definitely going to look a little different than I originally intended.

We started our travel immersion progam early-on, and we take baby steps. This past weekend we went to visit our old besties (not that they aren't our besties anymore, but they moved 400 miles away, so they're on probation ;)) Because Jack had T-ball and DM is the coach, the plan was for Colby and me to fly out late Friday night, and Jack and DM to join us after T-ball on Saturday. Jack was aware of this plan, and was fine with it, until three minutes before Colby and I were about to leave, when he threw THE EVER LOVIN' MOTHER of all fits. He literally acted like I told him he was never going to see us ever again. He tends to the dramatic, but this was a whole new level of distress. It was such that I actually called the airline to see if it would be possible to switch his flight from Saturday to that night (like, 2 hours hence). Jack, sobbing, asked, "Arwe you weally calling da pilot to get me a ticket, Mom???" The ever-helpful Alaska Airlines representative was more than happy to switch J's ticket, for a change in fare AND a hefty fee. I was like, eff that.

So, we loaded Colby and our bags into the car. Jack continued to scream bloody murder, which got both Colby and the dog going, while DM and I were hollering at each other to be heard over the ruckus. I got in the car and started to back out of the driveway but for some reason the vision of DM physically restraining a sobbing, kicking, screaming, heartbroken Jack was just too much for me, so I stopped the car. I got out and told DM to put Jack in the car and drive us to the airport, so that I could fly, by myself with two kids, at 9:30pm on a Friday night (and DM could coach T-ball the next day even though his own kid wasn't present, ha!) I am ridiculous and insane. On the way to the airport, Colby starts losing her mind (I WANT MY SHOES ON AND OFF! I WANT TO HOLD YOUR HAND BUT ALSO I DO NOT!), and I busted out an emergency pacifier that we'd nixed two months ago. Oh well!

We got to the airport, got our boarding passes, got through security, and got to the gate with very little fuss. (Almost) everyone is so kind and helpful when you are a hot sweaty mess with two baby giants in tow. One guy about my dad's age who was traveling with his wife asked what he could do to help, and they were kind of my real-life guardian angels the entire trip. After hand-checking our stroller for explosives, the sweet TSA agent brought it over and said: "I tried to empty the sand out of it, but there was a lot." Ha. Story of my life. (Do you remember learning about asymptotes in geometry? And how they will never actually be zero no matter how close it looks? That is like sand in my life. And pee. And snot.) Then she gave the kids sticker-badges which was a big hit. God/Allah/Yahweh/Buddha bless their kind souls.

Things went so smoothly (relatively speaking) that we got to the gate with over an hour to spare, which, if you have kids you know is not ideal (though still preferable to being the last a-holes on the plane!) Luckily it was late enough that the place was pretty deserted, and they were tired enough that they'd lost some of their fight, but not so tired that they were in "the danger zone." For a while they were pretty content to stand at the window and watch the goings-on out on the runway.

This might be a good time to mention Colby's recent habit of calling out each and every vehicle she sees. She particularly loves trucks. Only, she pronounces it "phuck." Now, this hasn't yet been much of a problem, and I'll even go so far as to say we find it pretty darn hilarious in the comfort and privacy of our family sedan. But. I can now attest to the fact that it's more than a little embarrassing when it happens in a well-populated but nearly silent public place. "PHUCK! BIG PHUCK! BLACK PHUCK! WHITE PHUCK! WHERE DAT PHUCK GO?! C'MON, PHUCK!" O. M. G. What can you do?!? I was just like, "Ohhh, yes, truck. Yes, I see that truck!" I guess I should be thankful she didn't simultaneously want to "shit" [sit] and drink her "douche" [juice]. *Sigh.*

Meanwhile, Mr. J took his little die cast Southwest Airlines airplane out of his backpack and started to play with it. Then he began narrating, as he is wont to do. "Dis is not a Souf-west Aiowlines aiowplane. Dis is a Alaska Aiowlines aiowplane. It's bwoken because it doesn't has a tail wing. Dis bwoken Alaska Aiowlines aiowplane is gonna cwash and burin and all the peopow arwe gonna get dead." WTF?!?! "Ummm, that sounds really scary and awful, let's not talk like that, okay?" J: "I'm just pwe-tending, Mom." Me: "Okay." J: "I'm just pwetending dat dis Alaska Aiowlines aiowplane is gonna cwash and catch on fi-ow and die." Me: "Hey guys! Wanna read a book?" OMG. I have NO CLUE where he gets this shit?! And if I were to provide closed-captioning for the thought bubbles of the people around me, I imagine it'd go something like "May I please sit in a row that does not contain a mini sociopath? Super, thanks!"

When we got on the plane, the guy in front of us, who had apparently just changed his seat, looked back at me and my baby/luggage juggling act and said loudly to his travel partner: "Ugh. Maybe I should switch back to my other seat." Hey, twat-waffle! News flash! You were a kid once, too! And you were probably a dick even then! Why can't you be like the rest of civilized non-breeder society and just quietly give me the stink-eye?!

There was one other kid on the flight, probably about one-and-a-half, the same age as Colby Jean. I generally like it when there are other children on the flight because it decreases the odds that mine will be the a-holes, but this time it wasn't really working out for me. They were letting their kid run up and down the aisle, and in between, the dad alternated between tossing the kid up in the air and "flying" him around in a vigorous game of "airplane." Really it was a veritable circus act on a Bombardier Q400. I was like, Dude! Do you not realize that the only reason my children are sitting still is because I have told them that if they get up the pilot will come back here and arrest them put them on a time-out? You are completely destroying all suspension of disbelief here. Normally I subscribe to a live-and-let-live, "whatever you need to do to keep your child from screaming his face off and ruining everyone's day" mentality, but when your antics f*ck up my ability to blatantly lie to my children in order to get them to behave, we have a problem ;)

Anyway, we arrived in one piece (no fiery death or dismemberment, I am pleased to report), and I didn't even have to break out the electronics, so that ought to give you some indication as to how smoothly things went! I pray our cross-country flight to the east coast for Thanksgiving is as painless!!!

Even more importantly, we had as perfect a weekend as you can have with five rugrats under foot, cementing our conviction that traveling with children is worth it, even though the journey is infinitely more painful than the destination.

More travel quotes, if you're into that kind of thing:

"Not all who wander or lost." (My fave) - JRR Tolkien.

"He travels the fastest who travels alone." - Rudyard Kipling. You're tellin' me. God have mercy. Honestly. Somebody could cure cancer in the time it takes to get through security with toddlers in tow.

"Reminds me of my safari in Africa. Somebody forgot the corkscrew and we had to live on nothing but food and water." - W.C. Fields. That sounds almost as bad as parenting without alcohol.

"The World is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page." - Saint Augustine. Granted, if you're traveling with small children, the other pages might be laced with tears, ear-piercing screams, boogers, and mean mugs from your fellow travelers. But then you get to the really good parts ;)

"A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find that after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us." - John Steinbeck. Ain't that the truth! And a trip with kids takes you by the throat and nearly strangles you to death, but when you get through to the other side, you really appreciate being alive!

More Steinbeck: "A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it." Wait. I can't control my marriage??? ;)

"The traveler sees what he sees, the tourist sees what he has come to see." - G.K. Chesterton. I'm learning that travelers with children see public bathrooms. Lots of bathrooms. Incidentally, G.K. Chesterton is my most favorite quotee ever, because it is he who said "Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese."

And this -

Photo by Seattle Dredge of SeattlesTravels.com
This and several of the quotes found on Voyage Vixens

J: WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!!!
C: PHUUUUUCK!