I hope you enjoyed vacation kids, because it's the last one you're ever going on!

Do you remember going on vacation as a kid? I don’t remember too much of my childhood (I’m pretty sure pure long-term memory deficiency runs in my family), but vacations definitely stand out in my memory more than the everyday days of childhood.

I remember our beach vacations meant going to the beach every day and then having one other activity every day, like playing mini golf or going out in the boat or biking on the boardwalk. These were all fun pursuits, but the days weren’t over-stuffed, and I remember them being relaxing for me, as much as a child needs relaxation (besides naps). I always assumed vacation was relaxing for my parents too because they didn’t have to go to work for a week.

I now realize my parents were NOT having a relaxing vacation because of the nature of “vacationing” with children does not allow for a parent to relax, unless the children are sleeping. And there’s a good chance that the kids aren’t sleeping enough and are being total jerks and ruining everyone’s chance at a good time.

So much of the enjoyment of life is based on how the reality matches up to our expectations, and yet no matter how low my expectations are, vacations are still more work, and more trying of my patience, than being at home. This past vacation was the most difficult one yet, even worse than our first vacation to Ocean City when Rye was 5 months old and we had never experienced being the parents of a family vacation before. That first “vacation” was a real eye-opener into what the future had in store. Little baby Rye, who probably still napped 3 times a day, wouldn’t get into a solid nap, and at night, he would lose the binky or try to roll over and wake himself and all of us adults up as well. I got to see the beach for about 45 minutes at a time and felt chained to the condo otherwise. Welcome to the new normal.  

Fast forward 6 years. A week ago, my family and my parents were on a weeklong vacation in Lewes, De., as we have done for 3 summers now since Rye was born. If you’re unfamiliar with it, Lewes (pronounced like “Louis”) is the town north of Rehoboth, and it has a public beach on the Delaware Bay rather than the Atlantic Ocean. The bay is great for kids because it is warmer, has almost no waves, and is so gradually sloped that you’re probably 50 yards out before it gets to even my shoulders. The town itself is also incredibly cute with really well-maintained and modernized historic homes, walkable streets, a good number of restaurants and businesses, several parks and beautiful gardens all around. Last year we had a great location in downtown and we walked the kids to the canal front park nearly every night, where 5-year-old Rye would take a net and try to “crab” or “fish” off the docks, and Knox, the 2-year-old, happily played on the train-themed playground at the same park. We were excited to go back this year, with the kids now 3 and 6, thinking things would only get easier as they get older and “more mature.”

But maturity is not a continuous, predictable, straight line on a chart where age is the X axis and maturity is the Y axis. Knox turned 3 while on vacation this year, and while everyone knows the expression “the Terrible Twos,” I think both of my kids weren’t so bad at 2 but took sudden dives as they turned 3 and became “three-nagers” (pronounced like “teenagers,” if you’re unfamiliar with this expression). Knox has really been digging in over dumb stuff, and purposely does things to push our buttons, like calling everyone (including me) “stupid,” climbing on the couch by going over the arm instead of the cushion, and doing anything that you remind him not to do (like throwing the couch pillows on the kitchen floor) or not doing things you want him to do (like taking his potty-trained self to go pee in the morning, because just because he made it dry for the past 12 hours, he is not going to continue this streak for much longer).

All of these 3-year-old tensions came with us on our trip, and Rye started amping up on the things he’s not supposed to do either. Things like blocking the main pathways of the house with his homemade signs that say “Detour” and “Roadwork 1500 ft,” and over-reacting to every Knox instigation with a way-too-loud and angry scream of “Knox!” which is really only meant to get our attention. They fought even more than they do at home, and it’s not even like they were playing together. It was more like their independent, ego-centric worlds kept colliding into each other, causing each one to scream and maybe hit and often stick out their tongues and do a raspberry-like spit. Sigh. Naps were seriously fought, which was ridiculous, because after 2 ½ to 3 hours on the beach, they were exhausted and should have just enjoyed their stinking naps. (I know I would have!) They were up by 6 a.m. each day. Nervousness over a new sleeping space often meant bedtime rituals took an hour, so instead of Josh and I leaving their rooms at 7:15 the way I do at home, we weren’t done until 8. And Josh and I and my parents were way more tired than we wanted to be because we didn’t get that mid-day break. There were no adult naps that week, and very little book reading, and no date nights out for Josh and I until AFTER the kids went to bed because if the kids are that disobedient and disrespectful to us, we were not going to hoist them onto my parents because they already had to endure their bad behavior when Josh and I were trying to manage them.

Were my expectations too high? I guess so. I knew it would be harder to get them to sleep in a new environment, especially since this was the first year Knox was not sleeping in a pack ‘n play (which he can easily climb out of). The first 2 nights, Knox went to bed then woke up screaming around midnight, but we could get him to calm down, only then he would start up 10 minutes later and it turned into a temper tantrum that went on for the next hour, so that Josh and I slept in his queen bed with him, without pillows, with him kicking us unintentionally, and then poking our faces intentionally, at first light. I really thought nap time would be a shoe-in, because if the kids are up at 6 a.m., then at the beach from 9 a.m. to noon, they’re exhausted when they get home at 12:30 for lunch and nap. But I underestimated their stubbornness.

Another disappointment was their disinterest in enjoyable activities. They didn’t want to go to the canal park. We went twice, and Knox never tried the playground this year. By the fourth day, they started fighting about not wanting to go to the beach. They never took out their scooters, which they love at home and we thought would be a fun vacation activity, especially since our house had a dead-end street that led to the paved rail trail path. We took our remote-control monster trucks out on the path once, but that was it. The kids, especially Rye, just wanted to go home. From vacation. As soon as possible.

There were also lots of house problems, that I will now briefly summarize. This could be a whole blog of its own, but I’ll try to be short:

House #1: We booked it in September 2018 for a week in July 2019. My mom noticed in the spring that the owner had a bunch of cancellations in December 2018. We each emailed her separately, didn’t hear back, and I called VRBO to see what was going on but didn’t really get anywhere. Finally, over Memorial Weekend, my mom did a property search and learned that the property had been sold in January. I tracked down the new owners (who thankfully had been in the newspaper like 10 years ago so I knew where they lived and they had a home phone number so I could call them) and they told me they were unaware of any rental agreement for the property and that they would be living there themselves for the whole summer. We got our money back through VRBO and scrambled to book a NEW vacation house, one of the THREE that were left for our vacation, just 6 weeks later. We had our choice between a) The Pink House and b) Jefferson Street, and we chose Jefferson Street because it had a bathtub (for washing the kids) whereas the other only had 2 showers. So, we arrived on a Saturday at…

House #2: Jefferson Street. The house was kind of dirty when we got there. Not gross, but not well kept. And the realtor company that we rented from has a policy that says you pretty much have to clean everything yourself before you leave, but also that the cleaning company has until 6 p.m. to clean the house, even though you’re allowed to check in at 3 p.m. We couldn’t tell if our cleaning company had come or not. We started to think there is no cleaning company, considering how many cobwebs there were, and the fact that the main living room had 3 burned-out light bulbs. We did find a note in the utensil drawer from the previous renters who had left the property July 5, telling us that the house had had a sewer back-up during their week, and that if we discovered an inexplainable puddle by the side of the house, beware: it was raw sewage. Well, that was not very reassuring. On Sunday, the first-floor toilet stopped flushing, and in the most bizarre act of plumbing I’ve ever witnessed, it started bubbling when someone took a shower on the second floor. I was very worried that toilet was going to start overflowing in the middle of the night, contaminating my parents’ stuff in their first-floor bedroom. On Monday morning, we walked out the front door and clearly smelled sewer smells. We checked the side of the house and yes, there was a black puddle, which apparently was coming from out of the outdoor shower. So gross. 

Nothing says "vacation morning" like
the smell of poo in the back yard

We called the realtor, she said they’d send a plumber, who showed up around 1:30. The plumbers admitted they had been to the property 2 weeks ago and had been unable to fix it. They snaked the line from outside, then came inside, removed the first-floor toilet, and snaked from there, but could not solve the problem. At 5 p.m., they gave up, realizing they would have to dig up the front yard the next day. Our agent called us back and agreed that we could change houses, which we were ready to demand, considering the plumbers had been in and out of the house throughout the afternoon, wearing their boots through the sewage puddle and inside, tracking in sewer germs in our house where our kids still play with toys on the floor much of the day. So, at 6:30 p.m., we loaded up the first two vehicles and drove 2 blocks to…

House #3: The Pink House. It was smaller, with fewer closets, no bathtub, and it was a little less kid-friendly in design and decor, but it was so much nicer and cleaner and more homey. Knox was now in a twin bed that was pushed against a wall and my parents had a bed guard so he wouldn’t roll out, and we think he felt much safer in the smaller bed and he slept better (though still resisted nap several days). On Wednesday night a big thunderstorm rolled through, and we lost power. It was kind of fun at first, the house had candles and I found some matches and we stayed around the dining room table until 10:30 when we went to bed. The house was getting a little stuffy without the air conditioning, but the electricity came back about 15 minutes after we went to bed and we were able to use the ceiling fans to cool us down until the air conditioning got back to par. Except it didn’t get back to par. Thursday, I noticed the upstairs A/C was set to 73 and it had gotten to 76. By Friday morning, it was 78. We called and reported it, and they gave us a BS answer about the unit might have gotten frozen and to set the thermostat to 75 and see if it could get down to that. We went to the beach and when we got back, it was at 82. We called and complained, and a worker came around 4 p.m. and confirmed that the unit’s capacitor was blown and he had to replace it. He was done by 5:30, and temperatures were just getting comfortable around bed time, which was early, because we would be leaving early Saturday morning to go home.

As we waved goodbye to my parents at 6:35 a.m. that Saturday morning, Rye said “Yippee, we’re going home!” And after a few minutes, “When does school start up again?” Indeed, child, I’m looking forward to school starting back up too.

That’s a lot of bad luck for houses, but we’re not soured on Lewes, or its old houses, or even renting through VRBO. The Pink House was located directly next door to King’s Cottage, the house we rented last year that we really loved. So throughout this awful week of dealing with houses that are breaking down and kids that are breaking down and the desire to have a personal breakdown as well, we were conflicted by “we should contact the King’s Cottage owner right now and lock in a week for next week so we know we’ll have a great house” and equally feeling “if the kids don’t appreciate this vacation, and we’re working harder to make them happy than we have to do at home, then why are we doing this?” 
    We still have not come to a conclusion over this. We had a nice (still not relaxing) vacation when the kids were 2 and 5, so we assumed 3 and 6 would just be better. Not true, and so we can't assume next year their attitudes or behaviors will be any better next year. Rye was a pretty difficult 4-year-old, but we wonder how much of that was because he was no longer an only child. Or are these children produced by a combination of our genetics just really willful and demanding and bossy and unappreciative generally? There’s no guarantee that taking a 4-year-old Knox and 7-year-old Rye on vacation will be any better or easier. Friends with slightly older kids tell me parenting doesn’t get easier with 2 elementary school aged children, and friends with kids in middle and high school use the phrase “big kids have bigger problems.” But I think I’m more equipped for counseling kids through bigger problems. It’s this small shit that I can’t handle. “You’re screaming because your brother is leaning forward like he’s going to grab your sign, but he hasn’t actually grabbed it yet?” Nope, no sympathy. “You’re crying because you’re tired but don’t want to nap in your bedroom, you want to nap on the couch, so everyone has to be quiet and tiptoe around you?” I don’t think so.

I realize that we are so blessed that Josh has a job where he can take off a week here and there for vacation, and that we have money to actually GO away and stay somewhere and do things. But if the kids are just going to make us miserable, and ask every day when we’re going home, and say they don’t want to go to the beach because they just want to “stay around the house and be lazy,” (I’m not joking, these were Rye’s actual words,) then why are we doing this?

I believe in family vacations because they take us away from the usual, the ordinary, and give us time to give each other our full attention and try new things and create vivid memories, like some of the only memories I have from my childhood—our family vacations. Perhaps we should try 3-night trips instead of a full week? Should we care less about a beach and just go somewhere you don’t have to book so far in advance and just try to enjoy the differentness of the place rather than the idealness of a town like Lewes?

Or maybe we should pawn them off on relatives and Josh and I can take a week for ourselves. Heck, the first time we took a 3-night trip to ourselves it felt like a full week because there were no children to take care of or separate or argue with. Maybe Josh and I need more VACAtions, and the kids need more STAYcations.

Checking AirBNB now.

We got no pictures of all 4 of us together