Micro Trips with Micro Humans
Executive summary: We’ve had to drastically change the way we travel with babies/toddlers/young children in tow. Gone are the globetrotting vacations of our childfree years; now we take “micro trips” that are short in both time and distance while adhering to our “micro humans’” schedules and routines (and demands). Traveling is one facet of my life I don’t seek to minimize, but the kids have involuntarily forced minimalism on me in this regard too!
Sometimes, experiences in life turn out to be close to how you imagined it. Other times, they surprise you, or simply defy imagination until you’ve lived it. Raising children falls in the latter category for me. I could fill a dozen posts with all the ways I’ve been surprised, but today, I’m talking about travel with kids. In our childfree 20s, my husband and I discovered our love for travel (not to mention the budget to pay for it) – I wrote about it here. That came to a screeching halt when I got pregnant with my son almost 6 years ago and decided to take it easy with our international travel for a while (not knowing that COVID was going to ground us for even longer a couple years later). Since my son’s arrival (followed by my daughter’s 3+ years later), we’ve taken a few domestic trips, but only one vacation. What’s the difference, you ask?
To me, a vacation is about enjoying a substantially different lifestyle for a while, a chance to be free of the everyday chores, routines, and responsibilities that normally dominate our lives. A trip, on the other hand, simply means that you go somewhere, with no implications of relaxation or a break from routine. That is what travel with micro humans (aka young children) is like: you pick up your life and move it to a new location, but without any respite. Meal times don’t change, their diet doesn’t change, naptimes and bedtimes don’t change, dealing with meltdowns doesn’t change. Children thrive on routine and predictability; they don’t care that you want to wine taste, or walk along a scenic path, or see the local attractions. They want their normal schedule and their normal activities, and you’re already freaking them out by putting them in an unfamiliar environment, so they’re primed to scream at the slightest provocation, like throwing gasoline on a smoldering fire.
We run on our kids’ schedules even during trips, where we make sure they get their meals, snacks, naps, and bedtime routines just as they’re used to, lest they become exploding balls of pent up rage. That’s why I don’t call traveling with kids a vacation, as nice as the change of scenery is.
Some parents may have more courage or more agreeable children, but I’m a wuss when it comes to taking our monsters kids anywhere. We’ve done a few trips within a 2-hour driving radius, as that seems to be the right distance to get the kids to nap in the car (because if they’re not napping during the ride, they are vomit-prone disasters in the car). I don’t consider any of these to be vacations – they are strictly (micro) trips where we shift the family to a new location but continue living our regular life, the one in which we toil after our micro humans non-stop. The one exception is the babymoon my husband and I took while pregnant with our daughter – big bro-to-be stayed with grandma, and that is the only way we were able to relax for 2 days, running on our own schedule and eating our own choice of food and doing our own activities (for the first time in over 3 years). So far, no grandparents have offered to watch both kids together (I understand – an energetic 1yo and 4yo together can be a catastrophe), so we are always stuck with at least one child to dictate our schedule and choices no matter where we go.
The other big change that has occurred while traveling with kids is that the hotel has become more important than the destination itself. (And sometimes, the proximity of playgrounds is the determining factor in selecting a hotel.) We spend so much time at the hotel on the kids’ eating and sleeping schedule that we don’t go outside much. Last summer, I was so drained of ideas and energy that we drove to a Residence Inn literally 20 minutes away just to stare at a different set of walls and get takeout from a different set of restaurants for 2 days. The hotel is the destination, in many ways. When it was just my husband and me, the hotel was just a jumping off point for our explorations, so we’d pick one near public transit and take the smallest room at the lowest price. With kids, we now upgrade to suites when we can, to give us more walls for separation as we spend 22 hours a day inside (and a balcony counts as an additional room!) We also opt for rooms with a view, because if we can’t go outside, at least we can see it from our room. Both the size and views double or triple the price of the hotel. With our trips being one-half or one-third the length, I guess it’s a wash. (I’ve looked at renting homes through Airbnb too, but their cancellation policies are often too strict: with kids, you might need to cancel the day before because they just got sick from school for the 8th time that year.)
The hotel is the destination now, and we certainly pay for it. The prime views make it easier to be cooped up inside, and a balcony serves as an extra room to retreat to.
Now for the disclaimer part of the post: I know we’re privileged to have the time and disposable income to do any of this at all. Growing up, my parents rarely had the means to take the family anywhere. When we would take a roadtrip (flying was too expensive), we’d rent a car because our own cars were such beaters that they couldn’t be relied on to not break down during an extended drive. We’d crash on friends’ couches and eat ramen instead of dining out. My own travel, however constrained these days, would’ve been a luxury in comparison, and I do not forget that. I only mean to make the point that our kids (or all kids?) are just so exhaustingly relentless that nothing with them could be considered a vacation by my definition above (which would’ve been true for my parents regarding me back in the day, ha). It also doesn’t help that packing and unpacking is an ordeal in itself now. My husband and I used to go globetrotting for two weeks with one backpack and one tote apiece. Now even as a minimalist, I’m lugging the portable bathtub, bottles, sippy cups, sound machine, pack ‘n’ play, eating chairs, favorite toys, special foods, etc. I’ve even preordered diapers and had them delivered to the hotel days before arrival so we don’t have to bring a big box with us, another layer of planning I didn’t have to do before.
Everyone says it’ll get better with time. It’s true that I felt like my son got easier to travel with by 3.5, but of course, I re-shackled us by giving birth to baby sister right after. Now I’m eagerly awaiting the day she turns 2, because in my mind, that’s the magical age when we can sweet-talk some grandparents into watching both kids for a week or two while hubby and I take off into the sunset. Failing that, at least we’ll be able to turn her car seat forward-facing at 2, so maybe she’ll be ok with longer car rides and we can expand our roadtrip radius. I know better than to count on anything; it’s ironic that kids demand predictability yet they offer none themselves. I am only daydreaming/ fervently hoping that we’ll be able to do a little more travel as the kids get older, but our next vacation is nothing more than a vague fuzzy impression tickling the back of my brain, too unformed to even be called a thought yet, repressed by the reality that is life with micro humans. So to other parents who are also feeling tied down and ground down, I see you! I do believe there’s a light (vacation) at the end of the tunnel, and we just have to enjoy the (hopefully vomit-free) ride as best we can for now.