vacation

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Way Too Excited To Go Back To School, From Vacation

August 1, 2013 at 10:26 pm , by 

2 years, 8 months.

Dear Jack,

Halfway through our vacation last week, you asked me, “I go back to school tomorrow?”

I could tell, you weren’t asking me if you had to go to school the next day- you were asking if you could go to school the next day.

What’s not to love about spending 10 days in northern California with all your cousins, getting to play all day and have your parents turn a blind eye to you drinking juice?

(Sure enough, your eczema reappeared by the 2nd day, which is why we typically don’t let you drink juice.)

I say it all comes down to routine. You’re like me- you thrive in the routine.

Being on vacation is so… open-ended, and even… intimidating to the psyche. The part about not knowing what to expect the day is hard for you (and me) to process.

So I totally get why half-way through our vacation, you asked about going home.

Of course, you totally had a blast the rest of the week, and I still have a story or two to tell about that soon!

But I will say, now that we’re back in Tennessee, you completely appreciate the comfort of the familiar routine.

You were way too excited to hop in the Honda Element for the ride to school yesterday, which was your first time back to school in close to two weeks.

Very joyfully, you kicked your legs along with the bathroom echo rock music of The Shins as we hardly spoke any words on the 45 minute drive to school. You were just so excited to know you were about to enter back into your life of structure. I love it when you are that content and at peace with me, giddy and smiling the whole time.

Even though you showed some unusual hesitation when I dropped you off, I knew you wouldn’t have much trouble readjusting.

I was right.

 

Love,

Daddy

 

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Socially Unplugging While On Vacation Isn’t Easy

July 23, 2013 at 3:02 pm , by 

2 years, 8 months.

Dear Jack,

This morning I witnessed you doing something bizarre, something I’ve never seen you do before.

You and I were playing in the backyard when your cousins walked up. Immediately you put your head down and made your way over to a black pipe connected to the wall.

It’s not that you were pretending to be stuck. Instead, you just covered your face and didn’t say a word.

Even with your cousins trying to engage you, you remained a statue.

I couldn’t quite figure it out.

When you finally moved, you simply repeated the action at the screen door.

It’s not that you were angry, upset, or unhappy in any way.

You just didn’t want to socialize.

Trust me, I can relate! In order to function, I have to have a couple hours a day with no one around; which is why going on vacation with family can be challenging for me too.

So truly, I know what you were going through, now that I think about it.

What else could you do, as a toddler who claims to never be tired, and refuses to rest other than when he is forced to?

How else could you communicate with me that you just needed some time to yourself, without having to go somewhere to take a nap? You didn’t need physical rest.

What you needed was social rest.

You and I have that in common. We’re highly social, highly verbal people who need designated time to just zone out and mediate without someone or something interrupting our thoughts.

I get it now.

Next time this happens, I’ll try to accommodate somehow; maybe by taking you on a walk.

That’s why I enjoy writing, reading, and biking in my spare time. It’s a means of recharging from human interaction.

Whereas the total of two hours of driving we usually do when we’re not on vacation gives us that “zone out” time, we aren’t getting that regularly this week.

So while your behavior this morning did seem pretty weird, now that I’ve written to you about it, it totally makes sense.

And that only further exemplifies why taking a social break is a good thing sometimes.

 

Love,

Daddy

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7 Reasons a Vacation with a Baby is No Vacation

December 15, 2011 at 10:09 pm , by 

One year.

The term “family vacation” may simply exist as a hilarious oxymoron; especially when you have a toddler. While planning a road trip across Florida recently, my expectations were exactly where they needed to be: low. And as I expected, I therefore wasn’t disappointed.

Though it was very tough flying all the way to Sacramento with our son when he was only 8 months old, at least we had plenty of family awaiting us to help out. (My wife is the 9th of 10 kids.) But when you don’t have family to help soften the blow, an attempt at a vacation is simply that- an attempt.

Taking a vacation with a baby is like winning a free iPhone with a cracked screen. Or getting off work early due to inclement weather and then getting stuck in bad traffic. It’s like eating a trendy $4 cupcake but it being your least favorite flavor: Butterscotch.

Perhaps the best word for a vacation with a baby is “adventure,” which promotes the idea of excitement of the unknown and as well as the great possibility of setbacks. Here are 7 reasons a vacation with a baby is no vacation:

1. You can’t sleep in. Man, the thought of waking up lazily at 8:30 AM on my own, without a baby alarm clock is simply, unimaginable. Nice thought, though.

2. The irregular schedule throws off your baby’s sleeping patterns. We’ve been back for over a week now and our son still hasn’t quite adjusted back to not only Central Time, but also actually being able to sleep when he’s ready to.

3. You can’t ever mentally relax; even while you sleep. It’s more likely that your kid is going to wake up in the middle of the night. And while you’re awake, there is no pause button with your child.

4. You become stressed out about finding meals. When you have to synchronize your own hunger cues along with your child’s, while finding an appropriate restaurant to stop at, it’s not too surprising having driven yourself all the way across the Florida Keys without lunch. A sleeping baby in a car overrides the growling of two adults’ stomachs.

5. You and your spouse barely have time to talk to each other about anything other than the stress of the trip. When you do, it’s smarter just to fall asleep. So much for quality time.

6. Planning activities wears you out. You want to see all the cool tourist spots, but you also want to be able to relax. But you can’t relax anyway (as mentioned in #3) so it becomes easier just to distract yourself with the vacation activities themselves.

7. You become aware of the fun you’re missing out on as adults. So much for a simple date night at the bar of the hotel. It’s easier to settle for a bottle of Boone’s Farm from the gas station down the street, enjoyed in the splendor of two glass cups from your hotel’s bathroom counter.

But hey, this is what we know as normal now. I’ll sleep in when I’m dead.

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The Curious Case of Collecting

Collect them all… whiles supplies last!

The marketing teams working for our favorite kids’ cereals brands and fast food restaurants obviously had a good reason to promote collecting the whole series of toys they attached with the food they were selling: to increase profit. But what is strange is the way my actual response was often “sure, okay” or “I won’t make any promises, but I’ll try”. Because in the bottom drawer of my dresser at my parents’ house back in Alabama are several complete collections of plastic figurines.

A few months ago I gladly let a co-worker borrow my Dave Ramsey CD series on Financial Peace. Within a few weeks, she was no longer employed where I work. When I called her to say I’ll drive to her side of Nashville to get my CD’s back, she assured me that she will bring them to me when she’s finished with them. I waited two more months and called again- her phone is out of service.

The funny thing is, I don’t even need the CD’s. I’ve already listened to them and daily apply what I learned. At this point, I should consider them a gift that she needed more than I did. In fact, I didn’t even buy the CD’s myself. Someone gave them to me as a gift.

But they were MINE. And now she has them.

Why must I feel so compelled to want to possess things? Things I definitely don’t need. Things that aren’t even mine.

I am learning to convert this desire of collecting material items to collecting memories of new experiences instead. Collecting all the state quarters does me no good but travelling to random states like Rhode Island (which my wife and I did) stays with me. And I don’t even need a souvenir. As long as I have a memory, I’ll always remember when my wife and I got hot stone massages from two very strong hippie women in downtown Providence. And if one day my memory does fail me, I’ve got the pictures on facebook to remind me.

“There’s something missing in us, we long to make it whole. Though it never feels like it, I know you have it all.” -Pete Yorn (Social Development Dance)

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The Opposite of a Beach Bum

Along with “Check, please!”, “I think it’s time for Plan B”, “That’ll leave a mark!” and “Smooth move, Ex-Lax”, one of my favorite overused quotes from ‘80’s sitcoms is the sigh-infused “I need a vacation…” When my wife and I were planning our honeymoon last year, many people assumed we were flying out to somewhere in the Caribbean Islands. Because that’s the normal American thing to do, understandably. Though we have never been to a sunny beach coast together before, we both were aware that sitting on the sandy shores all day doing nothing would drive us both stir crazy.

There are two kinds of people in the world: Vacationers who relax and vacationers who explore.

And while it’s possible to do both, ultimately a person’s instincts causes them to plan their vacation according to one over the other. The observation is this: People who like to sit and relax while on vacation (often known as “beach bums”) generally go to warmer, sunny locations and stay in hotels. People who like to explore go to less sought after places often with colder temperatures and higher elevations and stay in lodges, cabins, and bed-and-breakfast’s.

In the last two years, my wife and I have traveled to the foggy, cold, rocky coasts of New Zealand, Maine, and Northern California. We are drawn instinctively to places where there are not a lot of other people around and where there is exploring to be done. Always in search of the next perfect, quaint local coffee shop. Or that beautiful scenic drive we can only take in a rental car in a city we’ve never been in before.

And when we can’t go on a week long vacation to a place we can really only get to by plane, we enjoy hanging out in The Highlands of Louisville, KY (an artsy hippy neighborhood with lots of cool, weird ethnic restaurants including Moroccan, Turkish, and Argentine, to name a few), Sevierville, TN (equipped with black bears), and Fort Payne, AL (my hometown that somehow became cool again when I wasn’t looking).

Most people take their vacations in the summer, when it’s hot. As I do. And most people travel to places that are even hotter than where they live. As I don’t. I loathe the depressing England-like climate of American winters, except in the summer when I want to escape to it. I escape to a more isolated city with less people around with no need for AC.

If people go on a summer vacation to escape all the chaos around them, why do they go to a really busy beach where it’s honkin’ hot? Shouldn’t they do the opposite? Shouldn’t they cool off in a quiet, peaceful place? I am the self proclaimed opposite of a beach bum.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHL3tBnzWP8