We've Gotta Get Out of This Place

I need a vacation.

Like, seriously need a vacation. Not in an "Gee, my life is so crazy, I could sure use a break, golly!" way, but in a "I am about to claw my own skin off if I don't go somewhere new soon" way.

I know there's some crazy statistic out there that claims most Americans never leave the country, and few even leave their home states, but I am not one of those people. I am a traveler. I like to go places. Mostly for the food, and, in my adult life, for the hooch: I've had reindeer in Finland, vodka in Russia, bignets in New Orleans, pizza in Chicago, oxtail in Spain, microbrew in Colorado, falafel in Israel, ale in England, wine in Italy, and, once in South Africa, some weird homemade moonshine someone brought to a party from, I don't know, Botswana or something, that caused me to black out for a short while.

Before my first son, the Juban Princeling, was born I overheard a man in an elevator tell his friend, "My wife and I just got back from vacation. Our first one in 15 years without the kids."

I vowed then and there to never be that guy. 

Three times my husband and I have tried to get out of town. Three times we have been thwarted by fate's fickle douchiness. 


In 2008 we booked a trip to Paris for a week. OMG did we get into it. I bought a "French for Your Trip" CD, the Lonely Planet guide to Paris, and my friend who had lived there briefly as a model - you know, as you do - inscribed detailed notes on a map for us. The Princeling, who by then would be seven months old, would stay with my parents in Miami while we ate bread and cheese and wine in a French park and slept in a French hotel room not littered with pacifiers, burp clothes, and spit-up stains.

Then we decided to move, from Manhattan to Brooklyn. And moving ain't cheap. And we had just finished paying off the massive credit card debt we had accrued while "nesting" in anticipation of the Princeling's birth. Something had to give, and that something was Paris.


Our next attempt at a child-free vacation happened in February 2010. For my birthday we booked ourselves three nights in a quaint little bed and breakfast upstate, complete with in-room hot tub. My mom would come up the week before and fly back to Miami with the Princeling. For weeks I had visions of spending my birthday sipping champagne in a hot tub while my gorgeous and awesome husband fed me chocolates.

Instead, my mom got stranded here in the Great Blizzard Snowpocalypse of 2010, and by the time she managed to get home, not even the promise of three days with the Princeling all to herself could convince her to take him off our hands. My gorgeous and awesome husband even offered to fly down with the Princeling and then return three days later just to pick him up, but no. My parents had seen the Awful Beast that is February weather in New York, and, like the survivors at the end of a zombie movie, they boarded up and went radio silent for a while.


Most recently, my parents - who clearly felt guilty about their post-Snowpocalypse, end-of-zombie-movie behavior that RUINED MY HOT TUB AND CHAMPAGNE BIRTHDAY (hashtag: firstworldproblems) - booked us on a week long cruise for this past April. I'm not a fan of cruises generally, but I didn't care. By the time they offered I was so desperate to go somewhere I would have taken a trip to Kabul. 


My husband and I booked our on-shore activities. Scuba classes in Cozumel. Horseback riding among Mayan ruins. Ziplining in Costa Rica. And OHMYGOD SEVEN MORNINGS OF WAKING UP WHENEVER THE HELL WE WANT TO WAKE UP. No one whining at us that the hot dog we made that he asked for is "too yucky." No one screaming "Bah!" into our faces when we tell him he can't have a lollipop for breakfast. No one responding with, "You could do it," when tell him to clean up his toys. Just my loverman and me, in places that are not New York or South Florida, places where our parents and child are not. Paradise.


So of course that never happened, because my dad was diagnosed with cancer last February and was scheduled to receive his first chemo treatment the week of our cruise. Just to spite me. We just could not burden my poor mother with both a 60-year old chemo patient AND an energetic 2 1/2-year old. If we had any doubts about this, in March I had to have emergency surgery to remove my gall bladder, and would still be recovering come cruise time in April: no booze, no ziplining.


My point is, it's not for lack of trying that the hubby and I haven't made it beyond New York or South Florida for the past four years. We're not those creepy parents whose lives come to a screeching halt with the arrival of kinderfolk. We are more than happy to dump our offspring on his grandparents so we can bust out our passports and try new foods and alcohols in exotic locales.


Because of my dad's cancer (calm down, he is 100% fine now. He even took a trip to Paris - !!! - and Amsterdam in October.) we made many visits to Miami in 2011, some just me and the Princeling, others all three of us. And now, with the imminent arrival of the Duke of Juban (ETA: March 2012) we feel we've earned the right to a Florida-free year in 2012. Oh, I know. Boo-hoo, we had to go to Florida. But we didn't go to fun Florida. We went to visit our parents, which, even in Florida is pretty much like going to visit your parents anywhere else. A couple of nights we went out to dinner in Miami, and I think we saw some movies. 

Ho-hum.


That's why we are making 2012 the year we finally take a proper vacation. With the kids! I don't even care. The Princeling is a fun guy, let's schlep him along. His baby bro, too. A friend suggested we do a family-friendly all-inclusive resort, and I found one in Barbados that has a nursery for the Duke and a Kid's Club for the Princeling so that from 9am to 5pm every day our kids can be other people's problems while the two of us glue giant frozen margaritas to our hands and go kayaking, possibly both together. AND WE ARE GOING. I don't care if we all die trying. I don't care if five hurricanes block our flight. I don't care if we all have to travel in body casts. I don't care if a giant earthquake rips open a chasm in the east coast and Balrog comes out. Come Hell or high water, we are taking a goddamn vacation this year.


This, I vow.

When Baby Boomers Become Grandparents

This past weekend I took my 2 1/2-year old son, the Juban Princeling, down to Miami to visit his grandparents. It's a win-win-win situation for everyone: my parents get to spend time with their one and only grandchild, my son gets quality time with two people who never put him in time-out and think his whining is adorable, and I get two built-in babysitters for four days. It's actually win-win-win-WIN, if you also count my husband, who got to stay home and hire hookers and drink absinthe without having to keep track of a baby monitor.

The Baby Boomer generation has certainly put its own spin on this whole "grandparenting" business. They are, remember, former hippies. Free love, flower power, Jim Morrison, Woodstock, bell bottoms, long hair, freaking out squares, and whatever else the dirty, unwashed types used to do, has spilled over into their golden years.

My mom, circa 1969.

(Kidding. My parents did not actually
attend Woodstock. At least, not that they
remember.) (Photo from xtimeline.com)

One night at the dinner table I had the following actual conversation with my son:

Juban Princeling: Where's Grandpa?
Me: I don't know.
The Truth: Getting high in the backyard.

Actual quotes from my dad:
--"Shopping for clothes for the Princeling gives your mother orgasms."
--(Upon seeing my son riding his tricycle backwards) "Look! You're doing reverse cowgirl!"

Now, I'm not a prude, but I'm pretty sure the sexual revolution was not intended to compare a toddler on his trike to one of Cosmo's sex tips. I know, I know, I'm such a Puritan.

While we were down there my dad became obsessed with a movie he'd seen about 100 years ago that's not available on DVD, or even VHS. Thanks to the magic of Google (and because I am Generation X, not Generation "How Do I Send An Email?") I found a copy for him online and we ordered it, but a)I'm pretty sure it's a bootleg of something someone recorded off cable TV; b)I'm also pretty sure the site we ordered it from is only quasi-legal at best. I've instructed my mother to keep an eye on the credit card they used in case of any suspicious activity in the next few weeks. But man, won't my face be red when that DVD arrives in mint condition and the credit card goes untouched!

(And it's not like I'm a squeaky clean mom, either. Some day when the Princeling is, no doubt, in therapy, I imagine several items from his childhood will come up, such as songs involving the lyrics, "If your girl steps to me I'm smackin' a ho," played at his second birthday party, and all his earliest memories taking place at a wine shop.)

But, the important thing is that everyone had a good time. The Princeling only got one time-out the entire time we were there, during which I had to forcibly restrain my father from rescuing him and calling Child Services on me, because when your life's motto is "Grass and Ass," you tend to come from the same school of discipline as Ned Flanders' parents.

My mom took the Princeling to his favorite place on the planet, the Gold Coast Railroad Museum, where every week they have Fun With Food Fridays, in which the kids get to make ice cream, then eat it, then ride in a real train caboose. My son the train-lover hits a special level of nirvana whenever his grandmother takes him to FWFF at the Gold Coast, and honestly, I don't know why it isn't outrageously crowded whenever they go.

The Princeling and his grandpa at the Gold Coast

Railroad Museum in April.
(The Princeling's steam train t-shirt courtesy of Shirts That Go.)

My parents have so much fun with their grandson that they make no pretense about him being the sole reason they ask us to come down there so often. He's only 2 1/2 and they've already begun estimating when he'll be old enough to fly down without me or my husband. If they were a corporation, the internal memo would go something like this:

"How can we maximize our Princeling time, while minimizing our Daughter time?"

But, I guess that's how it goes with children and their grandparents. The Princeling had so much fun at their house that he did his excited little happy dance for nearly the entire four days straight. He probably even did it in his sleep. And really, isn't that how it should be?

"I'm an airplane!" Classic grandfather-grandchild moment.