Vacation

One of the hardest things for me to master as a single mom has been vacationing. Not just the epic packing battles with two little girls who only want to bring 3 swim suits and 5 sundresses even when it's a snow trip, but the logistics of traveling alone with two small kids, and frequently a dog as well: all of those contingency plans and nerve-wracking crowded airports or hopes that the car doesn't break down en route to some hours-away destination.

Last summer was my first time driving to our family's cabin, 4.5 hours away, through hot valley towns and up into the Sierras, finishing with a 45 minute trek along a rutted dirt logging road, with two girls and a dog. There were bathroom breaks, dog water breaks, snack breaks, general runaround breaks for two girls who could only be happily confined to their hot pink car seats for so long. I stressed about the the possibility of having car issues, about the dog overheating in the car as I ran the girls into the next rest stop, about getting too tired and fed up with the back seat fighting and having no one to help me out.

I caravanned with some family friends that first time up, just in case anything went awry, and during the long drive I realized something invaluable: I had it down. This single-motherhood thing had already become second-nature to me. The girls had a bin of books and games wedged between their car seats that kept them busy for much of the time. We blasted music and sang together when we needed to perk up. I had a mini-cooler of food and drinks on the passenger seat, full of pre-cut, single-serve portions I'd readied the night before. I had a clear view of the dog sleeping on top of our pile of suitcases in the back, and could see when he was getting restless. When we had to stop in hot towns I blasted the A/C to cool off the car, then found a shady parking spot and made a game out of rushing the girls off to the bathroom and back to the car as quickly as possible. I lounged on random lawns outside fast food restaurants while the dog trotted around and the girls picked dandelions. I let go of my usual travel timetable, any expectations, and relaxed. And it was fine.

That's not to say I haven't had any travel or vacation hiccups in my year of doing it solo. We've been stranded with a dead car battery. We've had throwing up children traveling with borrowed bowls on their laps in the car. We've had the dog get into some sort of insect nest and end up with a face swollen with three baseball-size lumps and had to rush him to the nearest emergency vet. We've had a cross-country flight just days after Peanut fell and knocked out her front tooth and loosened up a handful of others, juggling her all-liquid diet on an airline in this no-liquids-through-security era. And we've made it through it all. And got some good stories to boot.

So today I'm packing up for our first big trip of the season. I have lists of all of the clothes, food, meds, toys, and dog supplies I will need. And I have the confidence, that even if some disaster befalls us mid-route, we'll get through it, we'll make the best of it, and we'll still have a good time.

And if it's really bad, I'll end up with a great story out of it.

Summer

After a slow, chilly start, I guess summer’s officially here. We finally made it up to the family’s cabin, one of the latest openings I can remember. Our trip was delayed due to huge snow drifts blocking the road into camp. A few warm, sunny days melted the last of the snow on the road, and we spent a great weekend up there with family and friends. It was too cool to swim, but the girls used their shovels and buckets to dig in a snow bank that was sheltered in the cool shade of cabin while wearing shorts and t-shirts. We hiked, swung in the hammock, sat around the fire pit at night, played with the puppy our friends brought along, had play dates with other kids in camp, found a small garter snake, tracked butterflies and lady bugs, and Peanut handled the rest of the insects as if she’d never had a hysterical fear of them before. The girls ran wild and got dirty and made “salad” with pine needles and gooseberry leaves and stalked the beautiful but rare snow flower around camp. This cabin, built by my grandfather, has now charmed its fourth generation in our family.

Back home, I brought out the kiddie pool and let the girls loose. We’re alternating between swim lesson days and kiddie pool in the back yard days, and I’m training the girls on applying their own thick slathers of sunscreen. Next week we’re off to the east coast, to spend a week on the beach with the in-laws, and I’m hoping to get either a Hawaii or a San Diego trip on the books before String Bean starts kindergarten in the fall. Since the summery weather took a while to get here, we’ll have to make the most of it while we can.

Cabin Trip

The annual Labor Day trip to the family’s cabin in the Sierras went well. There wasn’t any napping among the girls, and there were some 2am nightmares, with Peanut screaming so loud she woke the entire cabin, so we were all a little sleepy, but we made the best of it. The dog was hiked to oblivion, and the fisherman caught a few keepers and a lot of little guys he threw back, and the crowd enjoyed dining at the huge farm table my grandfather made with his own hands, and sitting around the fire out back at night, waiting for the little ones to drift off inside, playing guitars and sharing funny stories and remembering good times on previous trips up to the cabin.

One of the best things for me is watching my girls pal around up there, exploring every trail, pocketing handfuls of pretty rocks, marveling at the birds, butterflies, and dragonflies, splashing around in the swimming holes I used to play in when I was their age. My mother has spent her summers up here since she was born, as have I, as have my children. It’s nice, in this rapidly changing world we’re bringing our kids up in, to have something as constant as that, existing unchanged for generations.

So another summer of vacationing up there comes to an end. Next summer the girls will be a bit bigger, a bit braver, able to hike longer and maybe swim in the bigger swimming holes. They’ll also a bit more able to understand the history of one of their favorite places to visit, to learn a little more about the great grandpa they never got to meet, but who built such an amazing place with his bare hands.

End of Summer

This weekend we’re off to our family’s cabin in the Sierras, for our annual Labor Day end-of-summer vacation together. There will be eleven of us there in all, a reasonably sized group, perfect for busy dinner conversation, late night chats around the fire out back, large enough to break into groups of hikers, fishermen, and book-readers each day, but not too large for the small cabin with its one bathroom.

It’s nice to have a place to go where everyone is like family, and kids run around together, and dogs roam freely, visiting all of the cabins like official camp greeters. And the fact that my mom will be there to help out with the munchkins is pretty nice, too. Also coming are my sister and my five-month-old niece, who is growing in personality and size so quickly that I feel like if I don’t see her for a week, I’m missing some special milestone. It’ll be nice to spend three solid days with her to see what new tricks she’s up to.

Now, if I could just get some sort of guarantee that the kids will sleep up there (always an issue), I’d consider myself home free.

Bug Drama

My youngest’s bug fear continues, unabated. This past weekend we went back up to our family’s cabin in the Sierras, where bugs are just a fact of life. My mother armed the little one with her very own fly swatter, and set her on a bug-killing rampage that did not actually harm any insects, but landed several pieces of dirt and lint in the swatter’s net.

She actually seemed a little better by the end of the trip, shrieking hysterically at the sight of a bug, then calling someone to come kill it, but not trembling to the point of causing a mini-earthquake beneath her. She befriended the bug zapper, cheering up every time she heard the loud zap sound, asking repeatedly, “Does that mean a bug’s gone? Does that sound mean a bug is dead?” And she only woke up one night screaming about spiders in a dream.

Still, as soon as we arrived home, she was in bug-inspection mode, doing her careful sweep of the perimeter of each room, looking for spiders behind bookcases and desks, for flies hidden behind the curtains, or in the corners of the windows. After two days of searching, she’s only been able to find one fly, who flew out the back door as soon as I opened it. So far today she hasn’t called me in to kill any insects, real or imagined, so hopefully we’re getting past the inspection mode.

Cabin Success

So, our annual Memorial Day trip up to our family’s cabin was a success, to the amazement of everyone present. For the first time ever, my two girls elected to sleep (not nap at all, but you can’t have everything). They seemed to have a better sense of where they were at night, so the strange mountain noises and pine tree shadows didn’t scare them so much. I armed each of them with one of those keychain flashlights, the small push-button kind (shaped like pigs, for their amusement), so any time they felt scared of a shadow or unsure of where they were, they could light up their surroundings and put their little minds at ease. So, aside from the mild distraction of mini flashlights blinking randomly throughout the night, it was fairly peaceful on our side of the loft. Well, on hubby’s and the girls’ side of the loft, as he graciously offered to let me sleep on the twin bed downstairs, away from the girls. That ancient, slab-hard bed gave me the best night’s sleep I’ve had up there in a long time.

Also amazing was how well my new niece, just eight weeks old, did. She really is a very good baby. In three and a half days together, I think I heard her cry, a real full-lung capacity wail, maybe four times, and she was quickly appeased each time. I remember eight weeks marking the pinnacle of fussiness with both of my girls, the point where they’d scream for a good three hours each night no matter what I did to soothe them. This kid has nothing on them.

We took several nice hikes in mild weather (some with the girls, some, blissfully, without), enjoyed bonfire-side chats each night (vacating the cabin for a couple of hours so the girls could fall asleep), we got to watch the girls fawn over their cousin with more adoration than you’d think such self-absorbed creatures could muster, and I even got a little quiet time here and there to read. It was the first time in a long time that I’ve come home from a vacation without needing a vacation to recover. I sure could’ve used the help of a laundress after our return, but that’s beyond wishful thinking.

Vacation

Today we’re headed up to our family cabin in the Sierras. It’s an annual tradition, when we all brave the residual effects of winter in the mountains: snow, mud, rivers of icy snow runoff coursing through the lot the cabin is built on. Sometimes we get lucky and have a warm spell for Memorial Day weekend, and enjoy hikes, fishing, read-a-thons in the back yard, bonfires out back at night. Other trips have been punctuated by freak snow storms, torrential hailstorms, or neverending rain. While the poor weather trips aren’t the best for outdoorsy activities, they are some of my happiest memories, with the whole family sipping hot cocoa or tea before a roaring fire, doing puzzles and listening to music together, catching up in a way we never seem to under any other circumstances. There is no TV to entertain us, no telephone service (not even cell phones work in that pocket of the wilderness), no internet, just each others’ company and whatever books are at hand.

Whatever this weekend holds in store for us, I look forward to the family time and the break from our dependence on technology. There is nothing more relaxing than being totally removed from phone, email, and even US mail contact. There are about fifty cabins in the area, and neighborly visits are standard fare. We have several family members with cabins there, who we haven’t seen since our last trip up there in September, and I look forward to catching up with them, watching them fawn over how much my girls have grown, and the perfect beauty that is my seven-week-old niece.

We’ll return on Monday, slogging through holiday traffic with a dusty car loaded with dirty laundry, an exhausted (well-hiked) dog, and two sleepy girls who will, inevitably, refuse to nap in the car during the 4.5 hour drive home. We’ll collect the ignored mail, scan the un-checked emails, listen to voicemail, and watch the news to see what happened in the world while we were tuned out. And we’ll be toting a few new memories, too, of fireside family chats, maybe a long hike or two with friends, and big meals eaten at the long farm table my grandfather built. This has been a family tradition for generations, one I look forward to passing along to my children, and theirs.

The Cabin

We are days from making our annual Memorial Day weekend trip up to the mountains, where my husband, two kids, one dog, and I will spend the weekend sharing a one-room cabin with my sister, her husband, their new baby, and our mother. Sleeping is always an issue up there (or has become one, since we had kids). My girls have a hard time settling down in the same room as everyone else, and combined with all of those strange forest sounds and sensations, and maybe even the high altitude, they tend to wake up every hour or so. It’s like having a newborn again. Only this time, we’ll actually have a newborn in the mix as well.

It’s not enough to keep me from going, though. I’ve been spending summers at our family cabin since I was born, and my mother has summered up there since she was born. The cabin was built by my mother’s father, a man who never met any of his great-grandchildren (much less factored them into the design of the A-frame, with an open loft that sleeps five, and only one bathroom). My sister and I have already talked about setting up screens, hanging blankets, doing what little we can to separate the three children from each other. My two girls, whenever put in the same room to sleep, tend to talk rather than settle down. It’s cute, as it reminds me of being a teenager, when my sister and I insisted on sharing a room so we could stay up each night talking in bed. Only we were much older, and still managed to get enough sleep. My two girls might have a great time chattering into the night, but come morning, they forget all of that sisterly love and resort to endless power struggles punctuated by tantrums.

I’m packing ear plugs, white noise fans, and I’ve been talking to the girls about the sleeping arrangements, prepping them for the experience. I’m also planning to hike them all over the Sierras (weather permitting) so they’ll be too exhausted to chatter at night. I’ll admit, it’s not as relaxing a vacation as it used to be pre-kids. But I also remember being a few years older than they are now, and counting the days until we got to open the cabin for the summer. I remember days of exploring, swimming in icy streams, resting in the hammock out back, and making s’mores over a bonfire at night. I know it won’t be long before these three girls are busy little pre-teens, off entertaining themselves while I lounge out back with a good book. And when we will all be sleeping soundly at night.