Summer Vacation
Toddler Style
By Stephanie McCarty
For months, we looked forward to our first official
family vacation-just me, my husband, and our 2-year-old daughter. We’d had a
few day trips and long weekends away, but this would be the first of many
McCarty family summer vacations.
We soon found out that planning a vacation with a
toddler is a bit more complicated than scheduling the romantic couples-only
excursions of our past. In choosing a destination for our pre-baby getaways
we always looked for places offering great food, shopping, and things to do
and see and of course, plenty of opportunity for relaxation.
This time around, we realized we’d have to look for
restaurants offering hot dogs and mac and cheese versus fine cuisine, and
family-friendly accommodations (a.k.a.-a hotel that doesn’t mind
ear-piercing toddler tantrums, especially when they occur at 3:00a.m.)
We managed to book an oceanfront room at a kid-friendly
beach destination entirely with free hotel points-bonus! This would free up
some money for the many tanks of fuel we’d be putting in our gas-guzzling
SUV to make the 11-hour trip.
Then it was on to the preparations. Traveling with a
toddler requires a lot more effort and pre-planning than throwing a few
days’ clothes in a duffel bag and heading out. For this journey, we’d need
much more than clothing and personal items. For our week-long trip we’d need
to pack: car-seat friendly toys; toys for the hotel room; pool toys; beach
toys; special food and snacks for our sometimes picky little eater; a cooler
filled with plenty of milk (our daughter is somewhat of a milk-a-holic);
jumbo-sized packages of diapers and wipes; a portable DVD player and dozens
of “DVDVs” (as my daughter calls them); several special dollies, and many
extra binkies (a.k.a. pacifiers). Once the car was loaded on departure day,
it looked as if we were going away for at least a month.
We’d planned the vacation with a stay at my in-laws’ on
either end of the beach trip which would give us some reprieve from the road
and help us avoid having a stir-crazy toddler anxious to break free from the
car seat.
After two days with my husband’s family we were rested
and ready to get on with our adventure. We had so much we wanted to do and
see, including time at the beach, the pool, the aquarium, bike rides,
putt-putt golf and many wonderful seafood restaurants we were anxious to
try.
Once at the hotel, we were ready to see it all. Our
daughter had other ideas. She wanted to see the elevator and not much else.
When we finally convinced her that there was more to
see here than our hotel room, the hallway, and the elevator, we went
downstairs to let her have her first glimpse of the Atlantic Ocean. We
watched her eyes grow wide with delight when she saw the waves crashing in
to the seashore, and immediately decided she wanted to “swim in the blue
sea.” We took her shoes off and watched her tiny toes move through the sand
and closer to the water’s edge.
My husband and I looked at each other and smiled. In
that moment, I realized how much we had in store for the week-watching our
child experience these wonders of nature that we often take for granted-for
the first time. I decided that the key to a fun family vacation would be to
go with the flow.
As the week unfolded, we did some things we may not had
done if our daughter had not been with us. We spent an entire day at the
aquarium, watching our smiling toddler touch horseshoe crabs, rays and sea
stars, including half an hour spent watching large sea turtles swim up to
the glass to greet her.
We took a family surrey ride along the boardwalk and
reveled in her laughter as the breeze ran through her hair.
Sure, we dragged armloads of beach toys, umbrellas,
chairs and other sun gear out to the sand for what we hoped would be hours
of sunbathing and water play, only to have our daughter insist on swimming
in the pool after less than an hour at the ocean. But if we had followed our
own plan, we may have missed seeing our daughter get her pants wet up to the
knees playing in the surf, catching a glimpse of a dolphin fin peeking out
from behind the waves, and watching our little girl’s face scrunch up in
wonder and amazement when she felt the horseshoe crab’s legs move beneath
her fingers. Nope, I wouldn’t change a thing about our vacation-not even for
a deep, dark, tropical tan.
Stephanie McCarty is a freelance writer.
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