I love my kids, I just hate parenting
When my first kid was 9 months old, we went to Ireland.
We were dreading the long flight. It went fine. We were dreading the long drives around the countryside. They went fine. What we weren’t dreading was the hotel room we were staying in, or the king-sized bed we’d be sleeping in.
Little did we know that those were exactly what we should have been dreading.
Read more about My Baby Fell Off the Bed and I Bet Yours Did Too …
My parents live in Connecticut, about two hours away. We often take a family road trip to visit for the weekend, especially in the summer, because they have a pool — and also because my six-year-old prefers Grandma to me.
My wife and I dread those trips. Not as much as we dreaded them when we lived ten hours away, but at least back then we only had the one kid to worry about. Sure, two hours is a lot shorter than ten, but that eight-hour difference is more than made up for by the nightmare that is a screaming baby in the backseat.
We had a family road trip or three over the long Thanksgiving weekend. And, thanks to the approach Mom and Buried and I take, we survived them all. You can too!
I’d like to say that it seemed like a good idea at the time, but I’d be lying.
I’ve gone on vacations with my kids before. (Well, with my lone kid. The second one is brand new.) And while they’ve been fun, they don’t exactly qualify as vacations. Vacations are meant to be about relaxation, and recharging, maybe some reading, and maybe getting some extra rest. Vacationing with kids is a different thing entirely.
This past spring, when I took my 5-year-old and my 3-month-old on our first family-of-four vacation, I was not anticipating much in the way of relaxation. (I’m not really anticipating either of those things ever again.)
I’ve been to Southern California three times.
The first time, I was in third grade on a family vacation. The second time was for a wedding around 2005, during which I drove a rented PT Cruiser convertible. The third time was two weeks ago, when I visited Irvine, CA as a guest of Kelley Blue Book. Not only was this my first official “dad blogger” trip, it was my first opportunity to have In-n-Out in about a decade. I couldn’t NOT go.
Thankfully, this trip did not involve a PT Cruiser. Because Kelley Blue Book has standards.
If you’ve been following me on social media, you probably know that I’ve been on my own the past few days.
We were at my parents for the holiday weekend, and while I came back to NYC on Tuesday to go to work, Mom and Buried and the kids stuck around. The kids got to hang with Grandma (consequences be damned) and Mom and Buried was able to get some work done without paying for a babysitter. Or camp.
Meanwhile, I was living the high life, bachelor style! FREEDOM!