My So-Called Vacation (by Reality Mom)
Reality Mom (a.k.a. author Corbin Lewars) shares memories of her "so-called vacation" in Hawaii. As I read this piece the first time, I nodded with self-recognition. Been there, done that, bought TWO T-shirts. What I like most about this piece is its humor based in reality -- or should I say "dark" humor? ~ Elizabeth
To read more from Corbin, visit Reality Mom.
My So-Called Vacation (Part 1 of 5)
After months of housebound rainy days, Jason and I were really looking forward to our planned trip to Kauai. We couldn’t wait to be warm, go swimming in the ocean, and to feel the sun for the first time in months. But that was all we thought about, being warm. We didn’t think about what going on vacation with a four-month-old and three-year-old would be like or what flying for six hours, having a three-hour layover, and then flying again would be like. In fact, we didn’t even know that was what we were going to do until the night before our trip when we looked at our itinerary. “Why the hell are we spending over three hours in Honolulu when there are flights to Kauai every forty minutes?” I asked. But there was nothing we could do about it at that point seeing as it was ten o’clock at night and we were supposed to be leaving for the airport in a mere seven hours, which was another not so well thought out part of our plan.
Ever since we had Odo we don’t think, nor do we plan. It is the curse of being a second time parent. Maybe we are falsely confident that we know what we are doing and are prepared because we already have a child. We are proving to be dreadfully wrong. The day Odo was born we opened up our closet to see all of the birth supplies we had gathered, but never used. “Huh,” we said, “I guess those would have come in handy a few hours ago.” A few days later, we went to give our newborn baby girl a bath only to find out that we didn’t have a baby bath. “I thought we had two of them,” I explained to Jason. Not only did we not have a baby bath, we also didn’t have very many clothes for her to wear once she was out of the bath. Again, my lame excuse was, “I thought we had bags and bags of baby clothes in the basement.”
Our trip to Kauai started out the same exact way. I didn’t think about what it was going to be like to have to wake up at five in the morning to catch a plane, nor what it would be like to wake my children up at that hour. Nor what it would be like to spend twelve hours traveling with them.
The kids proved to be better travelers than I, which is no surprise. When we woke Little Dude up to catch the plane, his first words were, “That was a quick nap!” Odo just grinned at us and squealed with delight all the way to the airport. Once we were on the plane Little Dude entertained himself with books and toy animals and Odo squealed, nursed, and slept a bit. When we arrived in Honolulu many hours later, I had the audacity to say, “That wasn’t so bad.”
We went to a restaurant for lunch, where I made the mistake of drinking my lunch. I had just spent the last six hours being trapped in a two feet by two feet area with nothing to do but nurse my baby, play with plastic animals, and eat, so I was not hungry. But I was really craving a beer, so that is what I had for lunch. The biggest, coldest, best beer I have ever had.
Unfortunately, I was already dehydrated from flying and being a milk factory and the beer didn’t help any. An hour into our three-hour layover I got a migraine headache. About a half an hour later, Jason had a migraine as well and we both felt nauseous. We sat in chairs chugging water while Little Dude ran around the airport talking to anyone and everyone who was under three feet tall and Odo defied all rationale by staying awake for five times longer than she ever does.
A few hours later, we arrived in Kauai and I cheered, “Yeah that’s over! Now we can relax.” But I was wrong-again. I forgot that we had to get our luggage, rent a car, find the condo, and even once we were in that condo, we had to find some food because our kids were on borrowed time. They were running on pure adrenaline and that drug was about to wear off. They needed to eat and go to bed, fast, otherwise they were no longer going to be our darling children, they were going to be the devil incarnate. And there would be two of them.
Read Part 2 tomorrow on the A Wild Ride Blog.
Photo © Glenn Young
