While loading multiple porta-cribs and booster seats into a minivan I find humor in the sentiment, "travel with children equates to a trip not a vacation." There are more logistics, competing needs, and episodes of fatigue induced crankiness when we are all together.
Resisting the advice to "enjoy every moment when they are young" there are moments I could do without even if they do go by so quickly. But when I am caught in a downpour of rain on my first day of vacation I run quickly inside and miss out on lingering in the yard to enjoy the puddles and rain drops that glisten on hydrangea leaves during trips.
When I am on vacation there are no big sisters carrying their little sisters, or
hoisting their brothers up the fun house walls of trips.
I get to read books on vacation but not with a newly passionate reader nestled into my hip, the one who I have read to for eight years and who now puts books under her nightlight after the lamp is turned out so that the story won't end.
When I visit my mom on my own, we don't catch fireflies together like we do when she is also Nana.
On vacations there are no paddle boats with Aunts and Uncles, or
explosions of applause from Bop-bops who witness the five year old's first hole in one.
I am thankful for trips, and want to take many more that end by kissing cheeks that have a lingering mixture of salt water, sweat, and ice cream.
