Traveling with kids
A friend once said that taking a vacation with little kids is no longer a vacation; it is a trip. With a 6- and 3-year old, I certainly understand the distinction. We completed a nearly 4-week trip to the States to see all of my family, and upon returning to Lisbon, I felt like I needed my own mini vacation.
Thankfully, nothing on this vacation was as hectic as this walk through Times Square.
At the same time, Léoni and Lucas have become such incredible little travelers that there were only brief moments when our vacation felt challenging. There inevitable melt-downs, but really only a few. As we changed places, moved from house to hotel to house again, taking eight plane rides in total, standing in lines, being in shuttles or taxis, eating frequently in restaurants, having no consistent dinner time or bed time or anything else—our kids went with the flow. Junior is better than I am of making games out of any rough moment; I am better at providing comfort. Between the fun and the security and the experiences they have gained, our kids know that they can trust us and they can trust the adults in whom we entrust their care on occasional nights when we need to get out or enjoy dinner among just adults.
Junior and I had a spoken agreement when we decided to marry and have kids: kids won’t stop us from traveling and seeing the world, from enjoying certain aspects of the life we enjoyed as 30-somethings who had lived in multiple different countries. People said to us, “It’s a good thing you traveled before you settled down and had kids,” and we’d both cringe if not respond back that having kids wouldn’t mean that our days of travel were over. But one never knows. Thankfully, our kids are healthy, and we don’t take that for granted one bit. Because we know that our kids can travel, we have taught them how to do it. We have taught them that travel isn’t stressful, that it allows us to see the many people we love, who happen to be located all over this world. We get to spend every day—all day—together; we do sleep overs all in the same room; we swim and explore and play and eat cheese curds and stay up late. As I learned in teaching, it’s all about how you frame something.
When we leave Portugal, we go home. When we return to Lisbon, we come home. The fact is that Junior and I have moved so often we call multiple places “home.” We want to teach our kids that “home” means our family, not a place. Home is where they are loved, comforted, and allowed to be themselves. Home is where we have fun and spend time with people we love. Whenever we travel, Lucas has always asked when we’d return to our “Portugal home.” On this trip, he asked that question as we moved into the third week of vacation. Lucas might turn out to be more of a homebody than Léoni (who has almost never asked the same question), but he might also come to realize that, as long as we are together, it truly doesn’t matter where in the world we are.
