The Perfect Kid Vacation

I am the kind of guy who does not like to sit still.

This has long been a point of friction with my wife, who loves to sit still. We have long argued the merits of each, especially during time off from work, when the true meaning of recreation comes in to focus. Until I married, vacation was an abstract idea for me. I have held very few 9 to 5 jobs, so planning for vacation was a real novelty. It took me some time to adapt.

Now we do take vacations, and we take them well. Some of them have been transformative, and some probably even saved our marriage. But since the addition of kids, things have become trickier. It is tough to stay in a hotel, and tough to stay in someone's home. It is hard to find good meals, and you can't eat in most restaurants. You have to plan your day around the nap schedules, and that leaves only a few hours for doing and going and seeing, for me the meat and potatoes of a good vacation.

After a few false starts, I think we have improved upon the formula. For a week in November, we went on vacation and everybody had a good time. They had an even better time than if we had stayed home. I have some hot tips.

But before I proceed, I have to reveal my discovery that led to the title of this post.

Hawaii.

Hawaii is the perfect kid vacation.

We just returned from a week on Maui and it was fantastic. We rented a condo, did some shopping, cooked our own meals, and we went to the beach every day. We went to the pool every afternoon, and a couple of times we went to the local kid park and watched the sunset. I have visited many of the Hawaiian islands, including Maui, and never did I understand before this simple and beautiful truth: Maui has it all, a short drive from the airport. Great beaches, great accommodation, all in one place. Great snorkeling, surfing, and sunset cruises. Great views of the smaller half of the Hawaiian chain. Beautiful weather, warm water, and a little wild nature thrown in make Hawaii the perfect vacation destination.

Now for my hot tips:

Get a big enough place.

This is one of the tricks with kids. Sleep is important to everyone having a good time, so you need to make sure the condo/hotel/house you rent is going to be big enough for everyone and their naps. Just because a place says "sleeps 8," they might not mean it!

Go with friends.

We have travelled and vacationed with these particular friends before and once again, everything went swimmingly. The kids love to play and the adults love the social time after our children have gone to bed. Plus - condos across the hall made for easy child care!

Don't do too much.

Having an unambitious agenda is key to a good kid vacation. In eight days, we spent just one in the car out sightseeing, and we left our babies (and wives) at home. Sure, we didn't see the sunrise over Haleakela, but everyone still had a great time!

Don't be gone too long.

We have taken longer trips in the past, both with and without children. My wife is fond of pointing out that once we have factored in the large purchase of plane tickets, the marginal cost of one more day of vacation keeps going down the longer we are away. But there is a sad truth about diminishing returns. After about a week, everybody was ready to head home.

Take a lot of snacks.

Snacks are the cornerstone of our travel experience. They keep up the blood sugar, provide a diversion, and are always useful as a bribe. Don't leave home without them! Also, the perfect midmorning lunch for a day at the beach? Large bag of chips. Lime flavor.

Fly during the day.

We learned this trick the hard way. Sometimes our kids will sleep on a plane. Sometimes they won't. It is better to stick to their natural rhythms and hope for an occasional nap, but don't count on it! Also, long layovers are a great break. Plenty of time to run around without having to hurry and catch a connection!

Get the airport luggage cart.

This is $4 well spent. I don't care that you only need it for 50 yards. It might save your marriage.

Television is just fine on vacation.

Oooh, and those portable DVD players? Money!

Keep it simple with the meals.

This was my own mistake. I love to cook beautiful meals for my family and friends. But a rented condo kitchen is not the place to do it. Next time we'll hit the Costco and stick with burgers, hot dogs, and simple foods!

Take along a grandma (or two!)

Our recently retired grandma was invited on this trip and was a great asset to the general mix. Also it didn't hurt that we slightly outnumbered the children (5 to 4!) Without her, we might never have had the unique pleasure of sneaking away for a quick snorkel off the point or a drink at the bar.

On our last night, my kids and I watched the sunset together, dropping in majesty over the blue water in the fading light. Jeep took this picture.

As a parent, it is one of those things you just don't forget.

You'll Crack Your Head Open!

Parenting is no day at the park. But it does involve a lot of days at the park.

On one sunny morning this week I took my two little charges to a nice park in Vancouver, Washington for a change of scenery. It is a nice, old downtown park that has recently undergone some expensive renovations and added cool water features. It draws a strange mix of toddler moms, business lunch guys, homeless teens, and squirrels.

We got into a nice conversation with a woman and her two kids, aged 2 and 3. Jeep and the older boy chased each other around the playground, while the parents followed at a distance and occasionally . . . um, parented or something. The woman was very nice, and we talked about the rigors of being "at home" with two. Our conversation was often interrupted by general warnings or directives from the parenting core to be careful or take turns or whatever.

As time went on, I came to realize that we had a difference in parent styles. While our boys were different ages, they were both rambunctious little monsters who loved to bounce, climb, and sit on each other. But slowly I began to notice the frequency of negative messages coming from this perfectly nice mother. I think I'll call her Paranoid Mom.

Jasper, Come Down From There! Jasper, Let The Other Boy Go First! Jasper, DO NOT Touch Other People On The Neck!

It was kind of a micromanagement thing. But I liked her, she was friendly and sort of hot, so I just rolled with it.

Let me just say that she was a great mom. Excited, involved, fun. Basically, a female equivalent of myself (peals of laughter). She chased squirrels with her kids in the park. (Jasper, DO NOT Touch That Squirrel!) She shooed them away from the homeless kids encampment (Jasper!) and she took them to play in the fountain/creek/water feature that I think is so cool.

This is where it got interesting. Here I am, wearing my daughter in the front pack and leading my boy into the wilds of the two foot concrete waterfall with no shoes on. Paranoid Mom was doing the same, although she was hanging back on the edge of the fountain, splashing and playing. But Jasper would not be contained. He watched his new best friend 2 year old Jeep climbing the waterfall rocks and getting soaked and he felt compelled to do the same. Before long we were all tentatively climbing around the watery rocks, getting wet, and laughing happily.

I could not shake the feeling that Paranoid Mom had RULES for how and what her kids were supposed to do in dangerous playground water creek areas like this one, and we had somehow bent them. Everyone seemed alright so I didn't worry too much about it. And then I turned around and something amazing happened. I actually saw a thought bubble form above her head, and this is how she got her name.

PARANOID MOM

But she did not speak these words. Paranoid Mom held herself in check, as we all must hold ourselves in check sometimes. Because all parents have these thoughts, many of us have them hundreds of times a day. And I did't actually see the thought bubble. But I heard her thinking this loud and clear.

As a friend of mine said recently, keeping kids safe is the most important thing. I agree with this in theory. If an oncoming bus is about to mow down my toddler, I would sprint to throw myself in front of it or tackle him out of the way. My worry is that we as parents perceive risk that is in fact just the natural consequence of learning in childhood. We're not talking about buses here, wer are talking about standing next to the edge of a two foot waterfall.

If you never give a kid the chance to stand near the edge, how will he learn to be careful?

Nice Summer Memories

Man Obsessions

As a stay-at-home dad, sometimes I get little worked up. I confess this openly.

The thing is - I don't have a job. That is, my job is the relatively peaceful and sometimes smooth operation of our domestic life. I make dinners, the floors stay sort of clean, and I keep the kids busy with what I like to call "action," as in "Let's go find some action!" or "Do we need some action around here??" It's a tough life.

So I don't have a job in the traditional sense, but I mean that I don't have a pursuit outside the home to escape to. This is something I envy about working parents. Full time parenting could drive you NUTS. You have to maintain a strong sense of self, or the whole thing comes crashing down. And that is where my Man Obsessions come in to play.

I call them Man Obsessions because they are truly tied to my most primal needs for defining myself away from the nurturing parent role. I take great pains to separate the identity of parent with the one as Dad. Why? Because I am a Dad. I feel it in my bones. I work differently than the nurturing and loving mothers of this world. I can do my share of nurturning, but in the end my bonding is of a different sort. I've said it before - I'm a man in a woman's world, and I need to find some escapes to keep my sense of balance.

These obsessions have come along over the past months and they are worth noting because they bring back my sense of power. In a world where men work and women stay home, I need these things to keep me sharp, good at my job, and ready for another day. I am lucky enough to be married to a woman who sees this for what it is, and gives me the space to obsess.

COMPETITION

This has been a big part of my focus recently. When I get time away from the kids, I want to go compete at something. I used to run races, but let's face it - I can barely keep myself in shape enough to run for half an hour. If I ran a race tomorrow, I'd probably blow out a knee joint. So I opt for kinder, gentler competition. Last weekend it was the LC Homecoming Ping Pong tournament. This weekend I play in a monthly backgammon showdown with a bunch of backgammon nerds. And then there is fantasy football.

What can I say? I play in a fantasy league with a whole bunch of dudes who actually like football. I'm not really a football guy myself, but that is the beauty of it. There is an exquisite pleasure in beating someone at something as the underdog, when you know nothing about it. And me, I'm killing it this year. Top of my league. I don't want to jinx it, but I'm gonna win.

Ping Pong consolation prize for losing the loser's bracket. Hell, yeah I'm proud of it.

HOME CONSTRUCTION

There is a myth that stay at home dads spend all their time remodeling the house. I might have been started by Michael Keaton in Mr. Mom. "220-221, whatever it takes." Let me just say that this is obviously not true. You cannot work on the house and watch the kids at the same time. At least I can't. My shop is under the nursery, my garage is over the nursery, and I have had to settle for much smaller ambitions during naptime. That said, there are a few projects I have muscled out over the past few months that deserve mention, or at least pictures. They seem to come on sporadically, take all my time for two days, and then quickly fizzle out. That's obsession for you.

Tore down my back fence this spring and replaced the posts and crosspieces.

This is a sweet sandbox, complete with cover, but it still doesn't have any sand.

The boy and I built these tomato boxes for the sunny side of the street.

HUNTING AND GATHERING

Every spring I start an ambitious garden, and every year it fails. This year I built planter boxes and moved my tomatoes to the sunny side of the house. Voila! Tomatoes. At least 20, maybe 30. I know, it's not much, but watering the tomatoes is a great toddler activity. The picking of blackberries was also a huge hit this summer. We picked blackberries on every walk, on every piece of urban overgrowth reclaimed by the wilderness. One day we even went on a blackberry picking adventure that led us deep into the brambles of Vancouver lake.

This fall I also learned to do some canning and preserving. I first became interested in this when I tried a pickled beet in one of my martinis. There is a whole world out there of potential with home canned and pickled foods. This is also a great afternoon activity during naptime.

Finally, last weekend I got a permit to collect firewood up on Mt. Hood. This is something I have always wanted to do, and I loved it. A friend and I managed to buck logs into rounds and loaded about one cord of wood into the truck in just under four hours. It was a fantastic day of bright subalpine air and the smell of burning gasoline. My chainsaw performed admirably. Getting your own firewood is awesome!

Pickling


Blackberry foraging

Firewood collection

Now THAT'S a ripe tomato (say this to yourself in a funny voice and pretend to hold a cigar)

I have made the case here for taking some time away from the world of parenting to pursue sometimes ridiculous and often time consuming tasks and then bragging them up to your friends and peers. My only real defense is this: these things make me feel great about my time here on the planet. I get a lot of positives from being home with the kids. Every time I make my little girl giggle it lights up my whole day. And my boy? I love his new words and interests and ideas. Every day is a challenge and a joy.

But my beautiful little darlings need something more than a parent who loves them. They need a Dad they can look up to and respect, someone with their own interests and passions and obsessions and excitements. These are the things that I must keep track of or they threaten to slip away. It is easy to lose yourself in this job, and that is part of the trick.

If you need some ideas about pursuing manliness, you might check out this guy right here at the Art of Manliness. He has a lot to say about manliness, alright, but I think I could still take him in a cage match.

Dad Saturdays and the Result

PART 1, The Mommy Jungle

My wife is back to work and I am settling in to a rhythm with the two kids. It feels different this time around, and I confess to having occasional flashes back to the one kids program. In an effort to help both parents spend quality time with the children, we split up the weekend mornings for adventures.

The discussion of this weekend scheduling led me to a new idea entirely - Saturday morning time spent hanging out with other dads. I contacted a few of my fellow dad friends and made an open invitation to spend the morning tromping around a park outside of town somewhere. This would give dads and kids a chance to spend time together doing something that everyone enjoyed, and get me out of the stay-at-home dad routine that tends to drive me CRAZY by the weekend.

Let me expand on that. As a StayAtHomeDad, I am a lone tiger living in a Mommy jungle. I was spoiled last year when a close friend chose to spend 6 months home with his new daughter. We talked every day, and a few times a week we got together for kid hikes, Napgammon (that's backgammon during nap time), and trips to the Zoo or OMSI. There are definitely other SAHD's out there, but we have a hard time making connections. It simply is not in our DNA to bond over dimples and diaper changes. I see these guys in parks and around town, but somehow the relationship is best built on more firmly packed ground. Like football, or beer, or motorcycles You get my point.

Mostly, the park/zoo/kid scene is dominated by moms. And most moms take their kids to the park to hang out with other moms. That's fun, and fine, and when I'm there with the kids I can chat with them or whatever, as long as we keep it light. But if I made a mom-friend at one of those places, should that ever happen, if a conversation gets overly friendly - I feel the eyeballs of the other moms on me. There is also the issue of over-parenting or under-parenting in these public arenas. As a dad, I tend to be permissive about playground activities. My boy loves to climb to the top of the most dangerous ladder/slide/swing set. He's a boy! That is just how he's built. But I hear other moms, behind my back admonishing their own children to be careful.

It doesn't help that my little Jeep has discovered little girls, and he just loves to put his hands on them. In a little boy way, I mean. I found myself thinking the other day, "why can't Jude just keep his hands to himself?" and then I realized the folly of that supposition. It dawned on me that OF COURSE kids want to put their hands on other kids, they put their hands on EVERYTHING. And he's only two years old. Keeping your hands to yourself? That's a learned behavior! Last week Jeep followed a little girl up a tube slide. I think she looked at him funny and definitely wanted to be chased, but she was also about twice his age. Not one to turn down a bating, Jeep ran right up after her, out of my sight and up into nowhere. The next thing I hear were these howling screams from the little girl. And then her shoe came down the slide. And then her other shoe. When the two of them finally reappeared at the bottom, Jeep had her in a full on tackling arm lock. And they were having the time of their lives.

Of course I had to apologize to the mother. (That's my boy!) Moms have a strong sense of how the world should be, and collectively they develop a very strong moral sense. You've got to watch your step in the Mommy Jungle, man!

Part 2, Dad Saturday

By the end of the week, we've been steeped in these stilted interactions with anonymous mom strangers and I have HAD IT. So Dad Saturday seems like the perfect solution. Not only is it a good time for dads, but they get credit with their wives for taking the kids on an outing and out of the house for a few hours. Its a win-win.

Best of all, the kids get some time to be parented by their dads. There are some intangibles here that are hard to quantify, but I will attempt to give some examples. When kids and dads hang out together, it looks and feels different. Dads joke around. They play, both with the kids and their friends. They throw frisbees, and do chin ups, and talk smack. They throw rocks and climb on picnic tables. They chase their kids, and push them a little, and they discipline differently than moms.

Last Saturday we met at a McDonalds. That's another thing about dads - they eat awesome food that is definitely not on the recommended list. We met McDonald's and hit up the giant play structure while sipping coffee and talking dad shop. Then we loaded the kids up and drove out of town to Oxbow Regional Park, up the Sandy River from Troutdale. We arrived, hit the next play structure, fed the kids more snacks, and then set out on a nature hike along the Sandy River. When I say, "along" the river, what I mean is that we walked along an eroded cliff face that had a long and treacherous tumble down to the Sandy River. Let me just say to anyone not in attendance that the toddlers on this trip probably would have survived the fall. But they didn't fall. We walked right along the cliff edge, following the trail and didn't have a single problem. Score one for dads!

There were a few glitches in our trip that could be avoided next time. One guy and his daughter got stung by some kind of bee. We weren't carrying an earthquake kit. We didn't do very well with the carpools. It would have been helpful to bring about four times as many snacks. And it would be nice if we brought bacon, eggs, and a griddle next time, but those are just pipe dreams. I am calling Dad Saturday a success for its trial run.

Part 3, The Result

The biggest takeaway for our family was that my little boy Jeep (two years old) bot to play with another little boy who is three and a half. They played pretty well together, although I noticed that the older boy had an acute sense of imagination and wanted to make up a storyline to describe our activities. This was very fun, and I began by playing along as much as possible. My boy doesn't really need a story yet, he just thinks it is fun to go in the woods and pick up sticks and rocks. So when Jeep picked up a big stick covered in moss and started to drag it around, I called him a WIZARD. And then the other boy (O.) wanted to be a PIRATE. Great, I thought! Pirates and Wizards, what could be better?

O.'s dad had obviously played pirates before so he encouraged the singing of the pirate song (not the YO HO HO, but the Other One) and the occasional G rated cursing of ARGHH ME MATEYS! and SCURVY DAWG! This continued to be a laugh a minute until I realized that the stick O was carrying was actually not a stick at all but a pretend sword, with which he kept pretend sticking me and I kept pretend dying. Of course Jeep had his own stick, and for awhile he was playing "backhoe" with it. I'm not quite sure how this game went, you'd have to ask T. as he was bringing up the rear of our hiking party.

Nonetheless, eventually Jeep needed his own pirate sized stick, and everyone was getting along just fine until we stopped at some picnic tables for a snack. At this point, O. put down his stick for a moment and Jeep does the thing that he learned in pre-school, the thing of which I am so proud of him for. He was just waiting for a chance to grab the stick. Well that caused mass pandemonium and tears and who knows what else so we had to sort out whose stick-sword was whose, etc. etc.

Eventually as the hike was coming a close, O. abandoned said stick-sword in favor of another small curvy kind of stick which O. announced was a GUN. Let me just say that my little Jeep has never really been exposed to the awesomeness of SWORDS and GUNS which all boys come to know. It wasn't that I was hiding it from him, it was just that he hadn't found it yet. And where would he have seen such a thing? On Thomas the Train? Egads, no. So Swords and Guns it was for a short time, and no one seemed any worse for it. No one was killing anyone here, after all. Or even shooting or stabbing. It was mostly that they were just wielding. I wasn't even really sure if Jeep was taking any of this in, after all. It was an interesting twist to Dad Saturday.

And then came this morning.

I heard Jeep rambling about his room this morning, getting out toys and generally just talking to himself. I like to give him a few minutes to rouse himself before I go downstairs and unleash his energy upon the world. This morning I found him with a black stick in his hand. We have always called it "The Stick" and Jeep has used in many times in his short life to fetch lost items from under the couch or bed. The stick itself was a piece of tourist garbage from somebody's long past trip to New Zealand. It was just another piece of kid flotsam that we have hanging around the house.

Jeep was looking at it with a kind of wonder and newfound respect. It was at that moment that I realized that he realized that there was a connection here. "Sword" he said to me proudly. "Found a sword!" "SWORD!" "CUT THE BLANKET WITH A SWORD!!!" CUT THE CARPET WITH A SWORD!" "CUT THE BED WITH A SWORD!!"

Great.

This lesson in parenting brought to you by Dad Saturday.

Her First Album Cover

July at Baekeland Camp

Early Morning Flashback: