We Did It! Or, Road Trip

We finally got the courage to take our kids out of town for a weekend to Todd and Sue-Yun Flyr's place in Liberty Township (near Cincinnati). This was a monumentally huge undertaking for us, since traveling with little kids is hard enough, but these little ones are still all in diapers, very much scheduled, and who knew if they would adapt to someone else's house, without their little beds, their kitty and their stuff? They did great. We got another Latt kids' table at the West Chester IKEA for the girls to use and did our thing like every other day. The girls loved the change and seemed to really enjoy the attention of other adults. They slept normally, napped normally, ate normally. We took them to a different playround, a toddler sprinkle pool, and the Cincinnati Zoo. After bedtime Saturday, we had the opportunity to enjoy Sue-Yun's incredible Korean barbecue on smuggled china and sit like grownups under the stars, smelling the citronella and the kimchi. But the stars looked just that much different from 5 hours south, and I was good with that.

Why was the weekend successful? Several reasons. We kept the girls' routine identical to home. Same bath/bed routine, same naps. We didn't set them up to fail by forcing them to radically alter their schedules to accomodate our desire to run around, or shop, or whatever. We may have had a little less time for IKEA, or didn't go out to eat, for example, but the kids were happy and we had no big behavior problems. Another reason the weekend was successful was Todd and Sue-Yun's understanding that our schedule didn't have to jive perfectly with theirs and that was just fine. They slept later. Fine. They stayed later at the pool and at the Zoo. Great. We had the freedom at their house to make decisions for our family that would work and Todd and Sue-Yun didn't take it personally that we couldn't do everything together, or that we had to do it differently. I would be less afraid to take the girls places if I knew other people or situations would be so flexible. I suspect that Mr. and Dr. Lowe would be accomodating, since her schedule has been insane as long as I've known her. But other people we know are simply not as understanding. Too bad. We had an awesome time with the Flyrs and can't wait to go back.