A Vacation Transformed

For our last trip of the summer, we had the very ambitious idea to take A to the Kite Festival at Long Beach for a short little vacation. It started out ok. We took some touristy photos and ate some fried seafood.

 

 

I am discovering the art of taking a small child on vacation, and it is largely trial and error for us. Here are some dos and don'ts that I have discovered:

DO plan your car trip around nap time
DO NOT book a shitty motel room and expect to keep the child entertained for long
DO bring lots and lots of books for your book-lover, and be prepared to read them millions of times
DO NOT expect greatness if the small child has a cold and is grouchy
DO have a plan for activities
DO NOT expect to stick to that plan, and be prepared to bail at any moment

Because the Kite Festival is a huge deal, the only place left to stay when we booked it in April was the glorious Super 8 Motel. Now, a reasonable adult can normally do just fine in a cramped, stuffy, loud motel, but that is not really the case for a sick, restless, unreasonable two-year-old. She didn't like the wind at all, so we spent the first evening in the room. Of course, A and J slept mostly ok, but, as usual, I did not.

In the middle of the night, as I was up checking my Facebook, I stumbled upon an offer from a generous acquaintance to stay here:

 

Believe me, I almost woke my people up and moved out right then. Instead, I decided to surprise them in the morning. They were most thrilled to move on to these fancy digs, just a short walk from the beach and with a great view of the kites.

 

 

Grouchypants felt better about the wind once she got her hat on and got to run around a little bit.

 

She waved to a seagull making a narrow escape from her curiosity.

 

A beautiful day on the beach to kick around.

 

 

Daddy and A got some cozy reading time in.

 

And I even got to indulge in my favorite things, photography and basking in the sunset.

 

 

In the end, I would have loved to stay longer, but it just wasn't in the cards. The girl had just about enough on the third day, so we ended up heading home without doing all the things we wanted to. It is fine, though.

 

J had the perfect perspective on the situation. He said that years and years from now, she won't remember this vacation at all, and we won't remember the details of how frustrating it is to travel with a two-year-old. The only thing we will have are the fun memories through the photographs, and we will always remember it fondly as her first trip to the ocean. 

 

The moral of the story, if there is one, is to remember to foster good relationships with all people, even people you barely know, because something amazing can happen when you least expect it.

 

 



All Hell Breaks Loose, Again

Ever since I've been back from my dreaded 10 day work trip, A has been a sleeping disaster. My worst fears about knocking her off her awesome sleep train have been realized.

We had this down to a magical routine that was years in the making. Bath, books, and bed, peacefully. Sleep for 10-11 hours, in her bed. Cuddle in the morning. Two hour nap in the afternoon.

Now she refuses to go to bed. She just will not do it. Now it's fight to take a bath, read her books, then she wants to read books by herself, then she wants to cuddle, and then she'll go to her bed. And proceed to get back up 5-20 times. We spend hours on this battle every night. We're right back to the beginning with the sleep training, only she's not tiny and contained. She's a big, mighty girl now fighting for control over her environment.

After she's too tired to fight, she sleeps for a few hours and then gets up to crawl in my bed or just raise a ruckus. A few times she's just been up for the day at 3:30am. Not cool. She's getting about 8-9 hours of interrupted sleep now. And no nap. Refuses to nap. We're at a total loss.

We took her to the pediatrician, which wasn't really that enlightening. She just said that it could be residual separation anxiety and to keep putting her back in her room. But why is this happening now? We already did everything right and now it's just destroyed. She's been off her pattern before and has gone back to "normal" within a week. It's been a month.

Is it separation anxiety? Is she going through a growth spurt? Is it just summertime and hard to want to sleep when it is so light out? I would go for this one, but she drags it on until midnight sometimes. Did she just realize that she can open the door, turn on the light and walk out whenever she wants? Is it some sort of developmental pushing the boundaries?

Whatever it is, we can't really make her sleep. We need to contain it the best we can and not engage in the fight. It's just so profoundly disappointing because we really thought we had gotten somewhere, and life started to look a little bit livable again. I was even feeling like my regular, friendly self again instead of a sleep-deprived wound-tight bug-eyed freaky monster.

I guess what Buddha says is true - you can't really be attached to anything. The tighter you hold, the worse things will appear as they are in constant flux and can't stay the same. A flexible, nimble, accepting mind is a happy mind.

I had forgotten.

It's None Of Your Beeswax

I am as curious as they get about people and their situations and stuff, but I have learned that there are just some things you don't need to ask. It doesn't even matter how well you know the person, really. Some things are just none of your damn business. Unless someone specifically invites you into a conversation about having kids/trying to have kids/having more kids/the state of families in the world, just stay out of it.

They start obvious, like, don't ask a woman if she's pregnant, or how far along she is. Ever. Don't ask. If she is and she wants to talk about it, you bet she will. And if she isn't but she appears like she is, she probably knows about it already and really doesn't want to talk about it.

Don't ask a pregnant woman if she wants to have more kids. Pregnancy is a mixed bag and even if you're the most mother-earthy type of woman who wants to fill a giant shoe with children, chances are good that she just wants to concentrate on the task at hand.

You don't need to ask someone with one child, or ten children, if they plan to have more kids. I know you are curious. I always am. But you don't know the circumstances behind those kids getting here, and why take the chance that you are scratching off a painful scab? Kids aren't always easy to come by, and sometimes they are here for religious reasons. Either way, just be cool and try to live with the curiosity.

If I had a nickel for every time someone asks me if I'm having another one, I'd be a rich-ass woman. And when I give them my pat answer of "Oh ho, no, she's plenty", 99% of the time I get a tsk tsk. I don't need a damn tsk tsk and I certainly don't feel the need to explain that statement. Because if you really want to know the story, and you push it enough, you're going to hear this:

I grew up in a kind of unhappy, stressed out, dysfunctional family, and I spent most of my child-bearing years trying to undo unhealthy patterns so that when I did have a child, I would be able to raise it differently than how I grew up. So she could have two mature parents and a stable household, yada yada yada. Then I married a guy that I had to spend years convincing that we would be an awesome parental unit. By the time we started trying to have kids, I was in my late 30's and he was in his early 40's, and our fertility was not that great. We had a miscarriage and it was devastating. We went through a year of painful, expensive and incredibly stressful fertility treatments. I had a high risk pregnancy and our child was born with a serious heart defect that required her to have open heart surgery in her first six months of life. She is totally worth it and I would do every second of it over again to have her, but do I want to take my chances a second time, at the ripe age of 42? No I do not. So don't ask, and don't tsk tsk me. We have a chance to be the best parents we can be to an amazing little human, and we are putting all of our energy into the task at hand. That's all you need to know, unless we are in a deep discussion about all things, and in that case I'm all open. Just take my word for it - she's plenty.

We have to be a little bit self-aware with this subject. It is a complicated, private and potentially painful one. I've learned never, ever ask a woman in her 40's or older why she never had kids. Whenever that's come up, more often than not she tried and wasn't able to. Just the one question can represent unspeakable pain for that woman, and it sometimes never goes away. Or maybe she never wanted kids and never wanted to be judged about what kind of woman she is by being or not being a mother. It could be downright insulting.

I'm not talking about heartfelt discussions with your dear close friends. Obviously, that's different. I'm talking about co-workers, acquaintances, friends of friends, annoying distant relatives, or just people you meet on the street. I've been asked some of this stuff by people I don't even know, and I'm pretty sure they don't want the long answer, although they are never satisfied with the short hand either.

You can't really judge someone else's situation. You don't know their journey and how they arrived to where they are today. If you have no kids or one kid or step kids or foster kids or adopted kids or  twenty kids or non-human furry kids, or a combination of all these things, it's all good. We're all good. Let's just be gentle with each other out there, ok? We've all got our own difficulties and we really don't need to go about making things worse for each other.

Today's deep thought for ya.

Photo Show - Camping Portraits

Here are some pretty decent portraits from our camping trip.

Handsome Brother

Handsome Hubby

More Brother

Grubby Foot

Depth of Focus

 

Looking Back

 

Photo Show - Forest

We went camping near Mt. Pilchuk for about 30 hours this weekend. We intended to go longer, but a combination of camping with a non-stop two-year-old, a not-so-safe camp area and thunderstorms brought us back home early.

One of the best parts of this trip was the opportunity for photography! Here are some of my favorite shots. There is definitely a theme here.

You Can't Go Back

I was at the Honey Bear Bakery the other day. All the girls that worked there are so cute and nice and...young. I started to fantasize about quitting my job and going to work at the Honey Bear Bakery.

How nice that would be to not have too much responsibility, to work around all those nice young people and the delicious smell of pastries and coffee all day. And then, when you go home after a 4 or a 6 or an 8 hour shift, you're all done! No constant email, no calls from your grouchy clients or freaked out co-workers. Ah, heaven. Working at the Honey Bear must be just like heaven.

When I worked in food service when I was a kid, I dreamed of having a super important "real job" someday, with benefits and lots of money and respect. And look at me now! Here I am! An honest-to-goodness career with benefits and (some) money and (occasional) respect.

I don't want really to give up my career (or my house, because I'd no longer be able to afford it) and go work at a bakery! The longing was about being young again, but that time is gone. I can still cruise by the bakery and enjoy the coffee and pastries being served to me, but I have to be sure not to linger too long or I will slip into sad, nostalgic, creepy lady. I want my middle aged-ness to have some sort of dignity, after all.