The latest thoughts on traveling
After our recent (fairly pleasant) flying experience, I couldn’t help but take notice of an entry on a parenting blog entitled “When did traveling with kids get fun?” The blogger wrote:
If you had told me four years ago, when our daughter was born, that I would have ever enjoyed family airplane rides again, I would have thought you were crazy. In those first, early years, airplanes and traveling with a child frightened me to no end. I didn’t want to be one of those parents, the ones who let their kids cry and scream and kick seats in front and back of them. I worried about ear pain and hunger, boredom and antsiness. If there was a thing to worry about, I took the time to find it and mull it over. I was a bundle of nerves and raw energy, often needing a vacation from just the thought of vacation.
And oh the things we packed: new toys, old toys, bottles, candy, books, bumper pillows, favorite loveys, castoff stuffed animals, video players and DVDs. I felt like a Sherpa.
But something happened recently, some invisible switch was thrown. A kid who cried and screamed at takeoff and landing suddenly became an excellent traveler, in need of the occasional video and an eye mask for napping. On a trip to Mexico earlier this year, Emmeline curled up on the seat and watched an entire movie, gobbling up the TV time we largely deny her at home. After that, she settled into a ball somehow and took a nap. I didn’t even notice the sustained, blissful silence until I’d gotten 200 pages into a thriller and looked at my wife with eyes that said, “This is awesome!”
I feel as if I could have written this: Though my girls, especially Zoe, have always traveled relatively well, I still constantly fretted about flying with them. And the whole needing-a-vacation-from-my-vacation thing? Yup, I felt that way too. But, like this blogger, I felt like some sort of switch was turned on during our last trip. Zoe, despite a few fatigue-induced rough moments on our flight home, was a total traveling pro – and so, really, was Avery. We saw no tears from either girl on our outbound flight, and I even managed to read half of a magazine – a real feat!
It would be delusional to think that we won’t have some rough flights in our future – and I’m too much of a stress-case to completely stop fretting about traveling with the girls – but I do feel quite hopeful (even more so than the last time I wrote about this) for the future. Perhaps someday soon, like this blogging dad, I’ll even come to think of flying as “fun” again!
-M