Vacation with a Monster Baby

Baby W is finally asleep...

The suitcases from my surprise Mother's Day mini-vacation are finally unpacked...

My frozen dinner has been consumed, a load of laundry is in the washer and the hubby is off at an activity for church...

I take a deep breath, pour a glass of diet cherry pepsi on ice, sit down with my laptop, and try to find the words to explain whats on my mind...

{photo from Getty Images, and no, its not me}

You see, something happens to me when I go on vacation.  Whenever I'm away from home, away from all the responsibilities and obligations of every day life, I make this unrealistic commitment to myself.  I commit that when I get home I am going to turn my life around, get everything in order, do all those things I have been putting off. 

I tell myself, "when I get home I'm going to clean out my closet and all my junk drawers, I'm going to officially declutter my home, I'm going to start that diet,  I'm going to start exercising every single day, I'm going to start reading classic literature, I'm going to cook dinner every night, I'm going to start doing flashcards with Baby W, I will get Lil W on a set SCHEDULE, I'm going to start writing my novel, I'm going to study the scriptures for 30 minutes every day, I'm going to read the newspaper and actually know whats going on in this world, I'm going to STOP watching TV"...and the list goes on.

You see, when I am on vacation, anything seems possible. And its not that these are unrealistic or impossible goals I'm setting for myself {I mean read the newspaper, how hard can that really be, ha!}.  After all, these are all goals that will inevitably make my life better...but for some reason, these are the areas I struggle with every day...these are the same goals I recommit to over and over.  And this last vacation, I did it again.

I told myself, when I get home, things are going to change...

And this time I want to believe its true.

Aside from the goal setting and commitment making, this vacation was different than past ones the hubby and I have taken--this time Baby W was with us.  

When the hubby announced my surprise Mother's Day gift of a trip to our favorite destination ever, the place where we spent our honeymoon {Catalina Island}--I became overwhelmed with excitement at the thought of introducing Baby W to the place that holds so many special memories for our little family. 

{Catalina Island, the happiest place on Earth}

I imagined Lil W having a blast playing on the beach, excited to explore the island in his stroller, baby-flirting with all the new people, enjoying the undivided attention from his mommy and daddy, and then crashing from exhaustion at the end of the day.  And to a large extent that's exactly what happened {minus the crashing from exhaustion part}.  

For 4 days and 3 nights Baby W did not sleep.  Sure he closed his eyes, he even snored a bit...but, without fail, just as mommy and daddy closed their eyes and drifted into stage 1 of the sleep cycle, Baby W was awake and crying loud enough to wake up our unsuspecting hotel room neighbors.  Needless to say, we were not the most popular family in the hotel. 

In addition, Baby W learned how to throw a full-blown temper tantrum this week--which he did often.  And because we were in a place where others were trying to relax and unwind, I couldn't just let him throw a fit until he calmed down, like I wanted to. Instead, I had to cater to his every whimper, which only succeed in increasing the frequency of tantrums.

The hubby and I spent our mornings taking turns waking up with Baby W at 4:45 am, because for some reason Lil W is confused about the whole sleeping in on vacation thing--instead, he decided to wake up an hour and a half earlier each morning. 

At one point on our "vacation" the hubby actually asked if I wanted to go home early.  And for some reason {one that I can't explain} when he uttered those words, I nearly cried.  To me, it was as if "going home"
 was admitting failure to this whole parenting business.  I mean, we have a baby now, so we are supposed to enjoy vacationing together, enjoy making scrapbook worthy memories together...so why were we so miserable? 

I wish I could say that the remainder of our vacation was smooth sailing--but that would be a lie.  The truth is, the downward spiral continued.  By the time we arrived home, back to obligation and responsibility, we realized we were now in need of a vacation from our vacation.

Would we do it again, you ask? You know, we probably would. {Que another cheesy Little Miss Momma life lesson} Because aside from the tantrums and 3 hour night sleeps, we did enjoy ourselves at least a little bit.

And as miserable as our trip seemed at times,

our pictures tell a different story:

{And yes, Baby W did pee on Momma on day 1 of our vacation}

In 20 year from now, we'll look back at these photos, and we won't remember the stress and middle-of-the-night-lack-of-sleep-nervous-breakdowns. Instead, we'll remember the first time we took our son to our most favorite place and made new memories as a new little family {and we'll laugh about the whole temper tantrum thing--I hope}.

Once again, all in all, totally worth it!