The family and I just returned from a little mid-week getaway that we had been planning for a month or so. We took the kids up to the mountains to play in the snow because we think that it’s somehow important for them to know about “weather,” and natural features like “trees,” and “streams”: things my wife and I grew up with, but that our little SoCal babies could very well be completely ignorant of if we didn’t make a point of exposing them to.
We’ve traveled with our 19-month-old twins a few times, and have always been pretty amazed at how much gear these little people require. Not only do they need enough clothes for the duration of the excursion (plus some extra to replace those inevitable casualties of bodily fluids/solids); but they also need their own dining room furniture, dishes, flatware, bedding, groceries, toys, books, etc. The mini-van was packed to the gills for a three-day trip, and we didn’t even bring any of our ski gear.
That’s right. We went to a ski resort (albeit a rinky-dink one), and didn’t even bring our skis or snowboards. Because we didn’t harbor any illusions about having time to do fun stuff for ourselves. We knew pretty much how it would go down, which is pretty much how every day goes down around here. Get up whenever the kids first demand your attention, squeeze in some kind of activity between eating and naptime, try to get your shit together during naptime, and repeat until bedtime.
But of course, being in a new and unfamiliar place adds a few twists to the routine (as does, in our case, the throes of a lingering virus). You have to factor in several bouts of night terrors every night, early (5:30ish) rising, heightened clinginess, dread fear of anything that’s not like it is at home, and the havoc that can be wreaked by kids in a non-childproofed hotel or condo.
The pessimistic view of our little vacation is that it was hardly a vacation at all. We did the same childcare labor we always do, plus a little bit more, in a place that’s not as comfortable as our house. The kids got to do a little sledding on some ice patches that were remnants of the last snowfall over a month ago, but it wasn’t exactly a winter wonderland. The lack of snow notwithstanding, they certainly did learn about colder climates. More specifically, they learned that they don’t like wearing coats, hats, gloves, or boots and that it’s not much fun to sit on frozen playground equipment.
The more positive spin would be that the excursion was good practice for us regarding how to travel as a family, and that it acclimated the kids, at least a tiny bit, to staying in strange places. We also got to suss out the location as a possible destination for future trips. And the sledding was fun. And the kids got to see trees with needles and cones instead of fronds and those little palm tree dingleberries.
I grew up traveling with my parents. Most of my early childhood memories involve station wagons, trailers, tents, trains, planes, museums, ski resorts, multi-day hikes, and makeshift accommodations. I could ask my parents the question that’s nagging at me, but they have rose-colored retro-spectacles. They think I was a wonderful child, even though I know differently; and they would say that traveling with my sisters and me was always a pleasure.
Taking the long view, I realize that the memories we have already started creating for our kids will be worth the trouble and that I shouldn’t worry about the enjoyment-to-hassle ratio. But I want to know from people who have traveled with kids more recently: when does it really start being fun for the parents as well?
About BetaDad
In my experience traveling with kids starts to be fun when you reconcile the trip for what it is, and not necessarily the traveling plans/adventures of singledom.
My little guy is a real intrepid traveler, but then again, I don’t have the pleasure/pain of another POV that comes with multiple kids.
Also, the family pics are cherished reminders of the good times on vacays-colds, bickering, too much kid stuff to pack, be-damned:)
Twitter Name: talktherapybiz
Very wise…
I suspect that there will be more of a “payoff” in terms of kids learning new things and seeing new sights when they’re a little older. At this point, they’re still blown away by walking to the park. So going to a different part of the world isn’t really any more exciting than their day-to-day lives.
This brought back memories, BetaDad. Anyone who doesn’t have twins doesn’t really know what it’s like to travel with them. Our twins turned two last month and we haven’t been on a “vacation” since they were nine months old. Everything you described was like, yep, yep, yep. . . AND, I agree that you gotta start getting them used to travel and staying in strange places or they’re gonna be the kids that want you to move in with them in the college dorms.
I’d be interested to hear when it gets fun as well. . . :)
Twitter Name: lickthefridge
I’ll let you know when the fun starts.
About the age it’s ok to put them to bed and have a bottle, or nine, of wine.
That’s fun!
Twitter Name: Anissa Mayhew
Just last week I ranted and whined to my husband on the phone about ‘when is it going to be fun???!!!!’. You see, i attempted to get my three kids (5 and under) out of the house to the mall for a break from the cold crappy weather. I always set out with an optimistic mind, and at least 2 out of the 3 end up doing something that makes me wonder why i even bother.
For a solid number answer, my guess is 5 years old. my now 5 year old was awesome at age 3, but my current 3 year old is still a nightmare. Five man….for me, that’s another three years for my youngest. Lord help us all.
Twitter Name: lucynamackay
I appreciate your honesty. Not exactly encouraging though. I’m tempted to just stay at home.
My baby sisters will be 37 this year. I have vivid memories of my father chasing after the twins while yelling at my middle sister and I to hold still.
The family trips in the station wagon were great. I am sometimes sorry that my kids don’t know the joy of facing backwards in a car. It is well worth the effort to take the kids out.
Twitter Name: thejackb
when there are no more diaper changes there will be fun…I promise!
Twitter Name: DExtraordinaire
The diaper changes were the least of my worries! I know what you mean though. The diaper age is the time when they just need and want and require and want some more.
You can rationalize it anyway you need to…your story is everyone’s story and why people see you coming and hide. Kids, (albeit my reason for getting up in the morning (only because they wake me up), will almost always ruin anything that you deem an important family bonding experience. My kids ruin even my most mediocre local outings let alone anything resembling an overnight trip. I hope as other parents noted, that things will improve but I am keeping my expectations low.
Twitter Name: omahamama
Low expectations are the keys to pleasant surprises.
My kids are older, 9, 7 and 4. Our best trip yet was last year from the East Coast to the Pacific Northwest. There is much joy with the plane ride! Airline snacks! We took a bus! Stayed in a hotel with an indoor pool! You get the idea. Small excursions can be the worst. We did the circus last weekend and it was just whine after whine about food, face painting and lighted items. I was beyond miffed at the level of gimme, gimme, gimme. It’s a three day weekend and I want to do nothing.
Twitter Name: judihudek
Cool! Our kids were pretty psyched about hanging out in the airport on our first and only plane trip. I guess you can never tell what’s going to happen.
Over on this side of the pond travelling,or going out for a meal,with small children is like entering a restaurant with a vial of bubonic plague.A lot of places over here really don’t welcome families.Don’t know why,you’re bringing an income to these places.
Mainland Europe has the perfect attitude.We went to Paris for a wedding anniversary with the girls when they were 2 1/2 and 6 months.Everybody made a fuss of the girls.(Especially as they are both red heads,something you don’t see over there)Strolling down The Left Bank looking for somewhere to eat you saw everywhere had children inside.Fantastic attitude.
Twitter Name: JacksofBuxton
I’ve never been to the UK with kids, or as a little kid. I was there as a high school kid, and I didn’t always feel very welcome. I just thought it was because I was a Yank. Maybe it was also because I was an obnoxious punk.
Living in Germany as a boy though, I definitely got shooed out of a lot of places. My folks always said that Austrians and Germans much preferred dogs to children.
For us it got fun in two stages. First, when they no longer needed a train of porters to shlep all that furniture, clothing, and other etceteras around. Second, when they became youngish teenagers and could dress themselves, bring books or music for the road, and locomote on their own. Also nice is the fact that they’ve become rational by then — I now, a stretched definition of “rational” — and can talk about what they’re seeing and doing. What made trips during those early-mid teen years especially fun for everyone was programming in things that they decided on, thus giving us justification to drag them to something we decided on, or else allowing them to go do their own thing.
I guess the bottom line is, if our experience is any indicator, you have a few more years before you can have fun traveling with them. But the pay-off is you get awesome traveling companions instead of more luggage. (Well, since they’re girls, I’m not sure the luggage metaphor is apt.)
That’s very encouraging! It sounds kind of like the way I remember traveling with my family as a kid. Of course there were quite a few fights and bouts of irrationality along the way.
The traveling part got better for us when we got a van with built in DVD player and our oldest got a DSi. Lol.
All kidding aside, it does get easier in certain ways, yet harder in others.
For instance, when my youngest son was 3 weeks old, I took him and my 2 year old on a cross-country road trip to visit my sister. It was easier to deal with the 3 week old, since he was happy as long as he got enough boob time.
Other tips, now that the kids are 3 and 5…
1. Plan ahead for snacks, activities, etc. When we flew with a 1 1/2 year old, there was a backpack dedicated to it.
2. Bring help, or travel with other family/friends. You can catch a break every once and a while. We did Disney with my immediate family (14 of us), and it was great to have the extra hands.
3. Realize it will never go as planned. Be flexible. Kids like to be unpredictable.
4. Less is more. Some of my best memories as a kid growing up are from a hiking or swimming day-trip to a local park, with a picnic lunch.
5. When all else fails – plan an adults only vacation, give them big hugs and kisses and say buh-bye!
Sorry for the long-winded response.
No need to apologize. That’s some great advice. The “less is more” maxim is very apt. For instance, we just went out to get new tires on the car, went to a restaurant for lunch and then visited a pet store. The kids had the time of their lives!
Mine are 4 and 7 and it is soo much easier and actually fun at times. Although we had a saying when they were little….same cr**, different location. And to my cousin who now has a little one and looks at how easily we can travel, we say…you have to do the time to appreciate them at this stage.
So it does get easier, as long as you put in the time. Good to know.
Mine are 9 (he has serious ADHD, ODD and anxiety/sensory issues though!) and 3 (and she is in perpetual motion!) so traveling has great highs and great lows!!!
But, we still travel a lot together! We do long car rides to my family’s cabin (6hrs) and we have been to Disney World (12hrs of traveling including airports, connections etc) four times!
I traveled a ton with my family and so I am determined to do it regardless of the discomfort. But definitely, the younger years are brutal. And if I had twin two year olds, I would still be in the staying at home stage!
I focus on the highs and expect some lows. :)
And I take every form of technological entertainment I can find and carry. God invented DSi and iPhones and iPads. He DID!
Twitter Name: 5minutesformom
We’re trying to avoid the technology, but I don’t know how long we can hold out. We’re going on a 6 hr road trip pretty soon, and the kids get pretty restless in those car seats when they’re not sleeping. It’s hard to make the case that watching DVDs is somehow less enriching than staring at the upholstery for half a day.
Wow, I am amazed at all the negativity. Sorry, but I mean, really, you had kids and knew it would change your life. Once the diaper stage is over however, it IS much simpler. I definitely agree with that.
My husband and I were outdoor people so naturally our son was too. Diapers in a tent are no different than diapers at home. You don’t NEED to pack the whole toy box or the entire wardrobe. (However do be prepared for emergencies; cold, damp, pooping down the leg, things like that.)
We took our son on 3 – 6 day canoe trips starting @ three years old with – get this – NO SPECIAL FURNITURE, TOYS OR DISHES! AND he survived it. And he THRIVED! We camped in a tent and paddled upriver every few days for ice and that was our only contact with civilization. We bathed in the creek and washed our dishes there with sand.
He played with sticks, he threw rocks in the creek, he got dirty and fell asleep in a pile of leaves in the meadow at the top of the mountain when he got tired – without a blanket. He even ate food with germs on his little chubby hands.
At five years old he began rock climbing and rappelling. One of my favorite pictures is of him sitting under an overhanging cliff in the rain eating a box of raisins. His dirty little face is grinning ear to ear, day two in his dirty kneed jeans and red and black flannel checked shirt and he could not have been happier.
Perhaps being raised on a farm gave me a different perspective. I remember riding on the tractor with Dad until I got tired and then he laid burlap bags down in the fertilize bin on the planter and that was my napping spot. I didn’t even have a DVD player to fall asleep to.
Sometimes less really is more. After all, the Indians managed to live thousands of years without special dishes, furniture, and hand sanitizer. And I have never read one story of a DVD player being found in a teepee.
I didn’t mean to be that long-winded, sorry. My point is that even if you aren’t living in the wilderness, you don’t have to bring every comfort from home.
That’s a great perspective. I need more people around me who think like you do. We’re friends with one couple who started taking their kids camping as infants. (We used to go camping and hiking with them a lot pre-kids.) The stories they tell about those experiences tend to be a bit harrowing though. We do need to rough it with these girls, I think. When I was five, our family of five stayed in a tent on a mountainside in Montana for five weeks while we built our cabin, and I have only fond memories of it.
Maybe abandoning the comforts of home can actually make life easier. Who woulda thought?
Thanks for the positive response. After I posted, I was wondering if I would be booted out. I just really meant to say that we tend to make it more difficult on ourselves than it needs to be sometimes.
We too built a cabin in the woods. This was after I won the “Worst Mother Ever” award. (I can say that on this site!) My then 2 yr old had wiggled out of his sleeping bag and under the tent flap and his little blonde curls were nearly frosted. I was sure he was gonna die on me but he never even had the first sniffle. Many good memories of the cabin. It brought us closer together. There was no electric so we told stories by the fire and played games.
Hopefully some other readers will take a pinch of advice from what has been said, even if they don’t venture out into the wild. Thanks BetaDad!
My daughters are just 9 and almost 7; when they were younger (and before their father left me) we travelled a fair amount without too much hassle. I beg to differ with the commenter above re-Britain and continental Europe: I’m British but have lived in France since 1992 and I find Britain much more child-friendly than France (changing areas in shops, for example, child play areas everywhere…).
Things started to get “easy” once the diaper stage was over, like someone above said – it’s not the changing itself that’s the problem, it’s just that by about 3 you can be more spontaneous in just about every aspect (food, nap times (my girls hated napping anyway), clothes etc.). They’ve both been able to sleep elsewhere but home no problem (or no worse than at home, anyway) since they were tiny babies, and I do think it’s important to get kids used to sleeping away from home at an early age: Carla first “overnighted” (without us!) when she was no more than 1 I should think, and Lydie when she was 2-ish… not with family (we don’t have much), but with friends.
Now that I’m single again (and hating it), travel has become complex again – I now have to do everything (carry bags, book everything, do all the talking, all the planning, all the “coping”, all the dealing with whining…) AND never get any time to do stuff for me – last summer, the three of us went to Bilbao by train. We had a great time, but I shared a room with the girls, went to bed when they did, barely spoke to another adult for the entire week. If there’d have been two of us, it would have been perfect. But hey, this is our “new normal” so there’s not much I can do about that.
Sorry to have been so long-winded! 19 months (for me) was a particulary hellish age (mainly with my younger daughter, the older one started being hellish at 2), but each year has, so far, been better than the one before in that respect (3 was better than 2, 4 better than 3, etc.). My hopes are up for upcoming 7!
Every time I hear a story from a single parent, it just makes me exhausted. I don’t know if I could do it. I have enormous admiration for those of you who can.
Also, kudos to you for even attempting travel. I’m sure your kids are much better for it, even if they don’t appreciate it at the moment.
We travel with our two (3.5 and 2) quite a bit. I was laughing at your description of all the gear that has to go. It is so true, although it does diminish as they get older and don’t require the high chair/portable crib. I have to disagree that travel is easier without diapers. At least for the duration of any car trips. It didn’t take my daughter long to learn she had the power to get the car to PULL OVER! Squee! Who is going to call a newly potty trained kid’s bluff when they say they need to pee? Not this girl, not unless I feel like rigging a wet car seat for the rest of the trip. So at first it added at least an hour to our drive. I find myself looking forward to trips even though when I think about it I know there won’t be any “vacation” in it for me. These are their memories we are building and that is enough for me.
Twitter Name: Madatmama
Well, I don’;t know if it gets easier or rather the situations change… The older they get, sure they can do more for themselves but there also comes a time when they will voice what they want, argue w/each other, etc… and that can happen if they are 20 and still living w/you… or not living w/u and want to travel w/u… does that make sense?
Twitter Name: c. peterson
I’ve got a 7 and 11 year old and an English Bulldog that often sneaks her way into the car. It’s a TON of work but luckily my man is organized and “loves” packing the car. And I do think the memories make it worth the hassle – though I imagine I wouldn’t be caught dead saying that during a hellish ride back when the trips over!
You had me until “fun for the parents” and then I drew a blank. I didn’t know that was an option.
Twitter Name: whithonea
I missed this somehow. I would have commented. I will now. Your parents don’t have rose-colored retrospective glasses about everything. Why do you think we got a huge van? Do you think it was to prevent kids’ whining: “She’s touching me.” We often wished that electronics in those days would have allowed separate music sources and headsets.
Do you remember the trip from Oklahoma to New Orleans, where the car was impounded by the NOPD? And the next day when we were rear-ended in Baton Rouge and we couldn’t get the camping gear out except by passing it piece at a time over the back of the seat? But we went on to Padre Island where Hurricane Agnes flooded us out? And we went on to New Mexico where we spent the night in a laundromat/tornado shelter? And when we pitched the tent in the dessert where the locals said it had never rained, but when we came back from the pueblos our tent was down in the flooded campground? And we were driven out of Colorado by a tornado? But we made it on to Montana and back to Kansas?
Some things were easier then though. We never worried about child car seats and,at least in your early years, we didn’t have seat belts. After the GTO died, we just put the kids in the back of our huge Buick station wagon and let them roll around.
Twitter Name: Jim Hinds
I remember some of that stuff. Mostly from the stories. I remember the GTO breaking down and us hitchhiking into town in a car with a basket of Chihuahua puppies. And then we traded the dead GTO for the Buick wagon, right? Was that the same trip? And I remember peeling the fake wood paneling off the sides of the Buick where the sun had already blistered it halfway off. And swimming in the floodwater outside of our motel. And I remember being fascinated by the pueblos.
That’s funny. I have only fond memories of that stuff. Makes for good stories, anyway.
Twitter Name: betadad
I agree with you 100%. My husband and I feel that vacations are really just a way to appreciate being at home. I am always so happy to return home after being away. I do hope that at some point they will be enjoyable for all of us.