A Far Birthday Trip - L
For my now 2 year old son L’s birthday, we unknowingly booked a far birthday trip vacation, except it was just a vacation when me and my wife planned it out. Then we realized we were flying on L’s birthday. Spending a lot of hours on a flight is not an ideal situation for someone who is turning 2. It was also a coin flip for a 2 year old to be in a brand new place since it could go really well or really poorly. New routines are hard…at least for my kids.
The day of travel went pretty well actually. He slept on my wife for most of the flight. Shocking. Then we made it to the hotel after a long baggage wait time and rental car line. My wife is so thoughtful and pre-ordered a small ice cream cake to pick up for L’s birthday and things seemed to be lining up. It’s just that our 7 year old daughter E and 5 year old son C were not listening and created havoc. The fighting also boiled over since travel days are hard with 3 young kids…especially with E and C in an argumentative mood with each other. We basically crash landed at night into signing happy birthday to L and I crushed the ice cream cake since there was so much left over. It was vacation and it had officially started for me!
L did have a great time on the trip. He got lots of toys, from a wind up toy plane, a bunch of small squishy vehicles, and even a souvenir book he was crying for on the last day. I couldn’t resist and ended up getting it for him since it had some cars on the front cover. My wife also bought him the most random yellow car ever that he wanted.
What I cherished the most were the days in the pool. L loves the water and he doesn’t have any fear of it. I took him over to this ledge where he could stand with his little feet in the water. I was just a few feet away and wanted him to jump. He was hesitant at first, but was excited. I encouraged him and he eventually took the leap. He held his breath when he splashed into the water. I let him go underwater for just a second before plucking him up. He had this huge smile on his face and wanted to do it again and again. It was the sweetest smile and I wish I could bottle that feeling and memory up forever.
At the end of the trip, we were all exhausted. It was an early flight home and L was difficult to wrangle when we got on the plane. He did not want to sleep on my wife, so we let him stay up a bit. I asked to take a shot at putting him to bed and she agreed. I took L and somehow within a few minutes, he fell asleep right away on me. Maybe it’s because I put him to sleep almost every night or maybe because he was actually exhausted. I’m not sure, but I was so happy to be able to cuddle him for a few hours on a quiet flight. I also know that my wife was even happier that she was free for the majority of the flight. Sometimes things just work out.
