Vacations With Kids

I am currently on vacation. I’m sitting in a hotel room, when I should be at Six Flags, because of rain. This is a time of reflection, for now I can sedate my children with Benadryl quietly capture all of the lessons I have learned on this particular vacation, traveling with my 7 and 5 year olds.

1. Forget Six Flags. The coolest thing to kids is sleeping on a sofa sleeper. Or jumping across two hotel room beds. Or attempting to jump across two hotel room beds, missing slightly and getting a face burn from the dust-mite-infested comforter. Vacation scars = totally wicked.

2. Kids are deaf to the words “Don’t jump, run or stomp around in a hotel room after 10 p.m!  Don’t you know there are people sleeping on all sides of us?”

3. Ask your kids if they have to use the bathroom. Both will say no. Child A will have to go 5 minutes later, at which time Child B will then be stricken with an unstoppable urge to pee. He will scream and bang on the bathroom door that he is about to have an accident if Child A doesn’t get out of the toilet. What Child B doesn’t know is that Child A finds the toilet a creative space and will be in there for at least 20 minutes putting some final touches on her musical piece, Ode to Unicorns. One cannot interrupt an artist in her “process.”

4. Kids are deaf to the words “we’ve already spent a crapload of money on these amusement park tickets, we’re not going to play ripoff games like toss the ring on the bottle so you can win another stuffed animal from a scary carny.”

5. Kids can sustain themselves for at least 24 hours on vats of Sprite, those toxic-orange peanut butter cheese crackers and 2 bites of a large salty pretzel.

6. Kids are deaf to the words “This vacation is not all about you. Sometimes Mommy and Daddy want to eat somewhere besides McDonald’s.”

7. Children are hell bent on leaving some sort of prized toy hidden somewhere in the hotel bedding or curtains, never to be found again. Prepare to purchase a woefully inadequate but ridiculously expensive substitute.

8. Kids are deaf to the words “Don’t stick your fingers in between the elevator doors.”

9. Kids will fight over who gets to open the door with the hotel room key, who gets to pick the next ride you go on at the par and who gets to sit with Mom at every meal. They really know how to make Dad feel wanted.

10. Kids are deaf to the words “Keep your hands out of the hotel fountain.”

11. Free hotel breakfast buffets bring out the absolute worst of humankind. It is not a buh-fey: a meal laid out on a sideboard or table for guests to serve themselves.  It is a buhf-it: to strike with the hand or fist, or to battle against. If you are not suffering blows to the head because you stand in the way of  the angry mob getting their rubbery omelets, you will certainly be driven to adminstering blows to the head.

12.Kids are deaf to the words “I don’t FREAKING CARE which of you gets to PUSH the ELEVATOR BUTTONS.”

13. If you are on an amusement park vacation and it rains, be prepared to spend more than the cost of your park passes in lame ass video arcades to kill time. Then kill an additional 30 to 45 minutes watching your kids debate about which cheaptastic prizes they will spend their video game redemption tickets on. Then kill another 20 minutes comforting your devastated child after their cheaptastic prize breaks the minute you leave said lame ass video arcade. Ponder what a nice, non-buffet breakfast you could have bought for the money your kids just pissed away.

14. Did I mention kids are deaf?

15. Book a hotel offering free happy hour. You will throw all sensibility about drinking decent adult beverages to the wind and you will gladly suck down nasty white zinfandel, lukewarm beer and horrid mixed drinks of unnatural color just to forget about how unrelaxed you feel. Pair with scorched popcorn and stale tortilla chips.

And then, one day on vacation, you will take your kids to a quasi-nice restaurant {quasi-nice being defined as semi-dark, and offering seared tuna}. They will sit nicely and use their best manners. They will happily entertain themselves with the printed kids’ menu and activities. They will eat all of their food and declare it delicious. They will not kick one another, crawl under the table, drop a crayon or cry because there is no ice cream.

And then, the vacation will not seem so bad. Until you get back to the elevator, and someone has to push the button.