Vacation Time

I don’t think I’ve ever been more tired than I am right now. I am sitting on my bed and listening to the recordings of my last 2 statistics classes where my professor is discussing ANOVAs and sample linear regression with gusto and I am starting to stare at the wall. Aside from that utter madness, I have recently traversed back and forth across the better portion of the southwestern U.S. within the past four days multiple times – with children.

After arriving home yesterday evening from our stint in San Diego, I asked my husband if he thought our 2 year old, Alex, would be going down anytime soon as I had multiple mommy tasks to do before falling into bed only to get up and traipse across Texas to take middle son Simon to camp today. He looked at Alex, looked at me with pity, and said, “It’s 8:00 p.m. San Diego time, he’s naked, and he has a whip.” (DISCLAIMER: He’s naked because we’re doing the naked-baby-potty-training method, and, well, let’s face it, it is his favorite modus operondi and the whip is actually a thin strip of cloth that he waves around in homage to his hero, Indiana Jones.) Sooooo, after subduing Alex, washing half of the San Diego laundry, repacking it for Simon after climbing down off the ledge from Shelby asking if he could do anything as I was pulling the string shut on the already packed duffle bag (phfft – as if!), getting the heathens in bed; I got some down time. Did I mention that my oldest and ungrateful child, Christopher, managed to bring to my attention that I had not yet upheld my promise to set up his iTunes account so he could download music to his mp3 player for which I’m pretty sure I will be paying? This after I spent the better part of Monday and this month’s salary at Legoland. Where ever were my priorities?

This whole thing reminded me of the Father’s Day card I got Shelby this year. The front has two people in bed – the man has the pillow held tightly over his face and the woman has her face buried in the pillow. The speech bubble from the side has a large “Waahhhaaaa!” of a crying child. The man says “I’ll give you $100 to get this” to which the woman replies, “Make it $250 and a foot massage.” The inside says something about to the man with whom I’ve discovered hereto unknown levels of exhaustion. As I think back, I would gladly trade the amount of sleep I got when the kids were infants to the amount I get now. Seriously, most babies sleep for approximately 16 hours a day. So what if it is 2 hours at a time? Most of us learned the advice of sleep while the baby sleeps really pays off. Now, I’m lucky to get six hours of sleep a day. See, that infant thing is starting to look pretty good, right? Plus, they don’t talk back, but that’s a topic for another post…

Somehow, as the alarm was going off this morning, I found a way to get up. As I was welcomed back to work and recounted our adventures numerous times to co-workers, I had an epiphany. These are the times from which memories are made. I look back to my own childhood and can’t remember ANY vacations. We just didn’t take any. Our family had a lot of dysfunction, and whose doesn’t, but aside from the requisite trips to grandparents and family members, we didn’t do anything. I don’t want that for my kids.

Sure, the trips were hard. Our time at the world famous San Diego Zoo was taken down a notch because we all had jet lag and were hungry. The trip to the USS Midway was cut shorter than we wanted because we had to go to my graduation. Yes, my graduation – pictures and blog to follow soon. But we did it all together. The kids saw the Pacific Ocean for the first time. They went to Legoland. We experienced history on the ship. My children saw me graduate and learned the importance of education. And we did it together as a family. Sure, during the day they made me crazy; but in the wee hours of the morning when I awoke to discover them piled in the next bed like kittens, I was filled with peace and happiness. I watched them sleep and said a prayer of thanks. This is what being a parent is all about and we have to capture those moments where we can. As the title goes, THIS is what I signed up for.

As a post note I have to recount this incident at both the Houston and San Diego airports. As we all know, security is high and thankfully so. However, after pulling out my driver's license for the umphteenth time, I too have my limits. Finally, as we were going through security in San Diego on the way back, I had had it. We were late, most likely going to miss our plane, and the children were acting like the village idiots and worse. The solemn-faced security checkpoint guy asked for my ID. As I handed it over, I asked him if anyone in their right mind would use this for a disguise. Seriously, look at the amount of crap I am carrying and the children in my ward. These roles alone took on the labels of "suicide" and "martyr" to a whole new level - no avarice in mind. I informed the man that if I was really going to steal someone's identity and go somewhere, it would be to a tropical destination and would be alone. The guy must have been a parent because his stone-faced fascade broke into a smile, he chuckled, and instructed us to go to the front of the line. As a result, we actually made our flight. It seems that traveling with children is a universal misery to which we can all relate. I didn't say we signed up for, but that we could all relate...