PregnancyOctober 12, 2009
Going Colonial (with kids)
There are those family trips that tax you, so that you just can't wait to get home and settle back into ordinary life; then there are those magical trips where everything goes so wonderfully, where you find yourself feeling like a kid again, and in an out-of-body-type experience you watch your own children having the time of their lives and you think to yourself, they're going to remember this--because you remember having vacations like that when
- Tags: Travel with Children, Parenting, Family Travel, Family, Children
July 20, 2009
The bad, the ugly, and the good
We've been back from vacation for two days now, and I realized on Saturday that the urge to share bad vacation stories is not unlike the need to share birth stories--particularly birth stories that involve squirm-in-your-seat gruesome details. Even though I had sworn nine years ago I wouldn't be one of those new mothers who went on and on in intimate detail about their labor and birth experience, only days after L.'s birth I found myself to be exactly that kind of woman.
- Tags: Travel with Children, Summer, Parenting, Holidays, Health, Family Travel, Children, Beach
May 22, 2009
Planning the perfect summer vacation
It's Memorial Day weekend, and with it comes the unofficial start of summer. Maybe you've squared away your family vacation already, but if not, here are some tips to plan some fun, budget-friendly getaways.
- Tags: Summer, Vacation, Amusement Parks, Water Slides, Family Travel
March 18, 2009
Reading history
Whenever we travel anywhere I always like to seek out relevant books in advance for my kids to read—it’s the teacher in me. Or the book-lover in me, who knows. I do know that when you read about a place in the context of a book or picture book and then visit the place, it becomes all that more real to you. For years and years I've wanted to visit Maine because of my love for the Robert McCloskey books.
March 16, 2009
Front and center
On the train Saturday the kids and I were lucky enough to score the coveted “family seats”—four seats together, two and two, facing each other. The train was pretty empty, so we were able to spread out our things over the fourth seat. L., who is perfectly capable of reading for hours by himself, wanted me to read his latest Hardy Boys novel non-stop; then discuss the merits of the latest article in his Flight Training magazine. T. colored and chatted, and colored and chatted.
March 13, 2009
On the road again
The kids and I are hitting the road on Saturday--well, hitting the train tracks, actually. We're headed to the D.C. area to visit with my family. Yet again, Scott's Spring Break didn't coincide with ours, so he'll stay home with the pets and his pile of grading. I'll take mine with me (the grading, not the pets), and I'm looking forward to a stretch of a few days to sit, visit with my family, and watch my kids play with their cousins.
December 29, 2008
Absence makes the heart grow fonder
I think there's a famous saying that in order to truly appreciate a place, you have to leave it first. This applies so perfectly to how I feel about Washington, D.C. When I was growing up, we were only a short car drive away from the heart of the city. Sometimes on the weekends, as a treat, we would drive down to the museums, and as an even bigger treat, we sometimes would get lunch or a snack at the Cascade Cafe (at the National Gallery of Art).
December 23, 2008
Home for the holidays
T. and I officially finished all of our holiday baking yesterday. And even though I love holiday baking and cookie-making, I have to say that by the time the last of the dough remnants were scraped off the counter, and the last bowl washed, and the last tray of cookies taken out of the oven, I was more than happy to have reached the end of it all.
December 16, 2008
Bag of tricks: the (special needs) holiday survival edition
Ever since Scott and I got married, we have traveled back home for the Christmas holiday. We used to travel for Thanksgiving and Christmas, but once we became parents, traveling for two back-to-back holidays became pretty unmanageable. In the old, pre-kid days, and even in the days when L. was very small, we used to travel home at Christmas for a long block of days, and spread ourselves thin over family visits (both our families live in the same area--and for those of you who think this might make things easier, trust me, it does NOT).
October 13, 2008
The long, straight track
Many, many years ago, when I went with my parents to the train station to take my brother back to another semester of graduate school in Mississippi, and my mother was sad about his departure, I remember my brother cheerfully telling all of us not to worry, because Mississippi was just “at the other end of a long track.” It was a comforting thought, really; this idea that there was one long line of steel and wood and we were at one end and there, far away at another point, would be my brother, going about his graduate school life.
