Vacationing with Small Children is an interesting affair, in that it typically bears little resemblance to an actual “vacation”, at least as the term is commonly understood. Whatever notions of stress-free relaxation and unwinding the Parent might have going into it are quickly and rudely dashed by the inevitable manifestations of Chaos and Strife: sibling fights, poor nights of sleep, diverging agendas, and all the other challenges of Child-Rearing that present themselves in Ordinary Time. Only now, of course, you’ve paid some sum of additional money to do all of this; and while you are in a New and Exciting Place, free of the required routines of school drop-offs and pick-ups and extra-curricular activities and the like, you are faced with the intimidating challenge of coming up with a “plan” for your unstructured days, a concept as compatible with the management of small children as User-Friendliness is with Microsoft Windows.

The Experienced Parent probably knows all of this, and sets her expectations accordingly; and it seemed to us, in advance of our recent week-long trip to Cape May, New Jersey, that if this is done properly, what might seem to the Neutral Observer like a futile effort doomed to Failure, could, in fact, turn out to be Successful, even Meaningful, and perhaps even…yes, I am going say this next part….Fun.

Here is how it turned out.

We began by getting off to one of the most inauspicious starts in the History of Family Vacationing. The morning of our departure, while the children grew restless about when we were leaving, and did things like pinch each other and not eat their breakfasts, L packed the last of our necessary items and I took the lead on attaching our newly purchased Bike Rack to the Minivan, on the theory that the good old Family Bike Ride might be a nice way to spend some of our time. It was one of those Bike Racks that you attach to your trunk with hooks and straps, as opposed to the kind that attach to a hitch at the bottom of your car (despite their overall utility, Minivans don’t come with hitches). So I opened the box and read the instructions, which were, at least to me, pretty difficult to follow, especially when having to make small children stop pinching each other and eat their breakfasts. But I eventually made it through them, and got the whole thing all hooked in, fastened and bike-loaded. Once all the final items, including the children, were checked in, we were ready to go, and off we went. So far, so good.

We made it across Southern New Jersey without any significant issues; we didn’t even hit much traffic. In cheerful spirits, while the soundtrack to Mary Poppins continued to play on Repeat in our car radio, we drove toward our vacation rental through downtown Cape May, a charming beach town filled with fashionable cafes and restaurants. We thought about what they might look like on the inside, whether they served good coffee or had interesting artwork on the walls, and we imagined ourselves sitting on outdoor patios with the other beach-goers, wearing our sunglasses and looking all beach-y and talking about whether the Tide was strong that day or which way the Wind was blowing, and we imagined all this because we certainly wouldn’t be going into any of these places or doing any of this, not with our package of Unruliness. Perhaps I was doing too much imagining, or maybe I just got too into the new surroundings; whatever the reason, without slowing down, I drove right over a big dip in the road we were on, at which point the back of the van pretty much completely bottomed out, and the “Deck-Lid Spoiler” (more on this in a short moment), which was bearing some of the pressure from the Bike Rack straps, totally gave out and snapped right off the back of our trunk.

This raises an obvious question: Just what is a “Deck-Lid Spoiler”? Actually, I think we can dispense with that question [See Footnote #1] and ask a better one: why is a Spoiler of any kind attached to a Minivan? Did the Minivan wake up in the morning and look in the mirror and mistake itself for some kind of cool Sports Car? Any vehicle with sliding doors should absolutely not have any kind of Spoiler on it. I mean, right? [Footnote #1 – If you must know, a Deck-Lid Spoiler is this odd looking thing that’s attached to the top of the Minivan Trunk, serving, at least to me, no particular purpose, especially now that I know it breaks so easily].

(These are the sorts of constructive things I think about in trying times like these.)

So what did we do with our broken Spoiler, which was now hanging sadly off the top of our Minivan solely by the electrical cord powering the top-rear brakelight? Well, I come from a proud Family Tradition of using Duct Tape in ways it was not intended to be used, and while I may often forget to bring a lot of stuff, I never leave home without this stuff, because you never know when situations like these may transpire; and, if our fellow Vacationers were wondering whether we were indeed Duct-Taping our Minivan back together after this rather unfortunate mishap, they would have been correct. And I am proud to say that the Duct Tape held up for the remainder of the trip. Mr. Duct – I assume you’re the guy that invented this stuff – you continue to work miracles.

Once we got past the Bike Rack Debacle, the fun really started. J and G began their first installment of an endless series of Fights over such matters as who picked up the bigger rock off the ground, or who had more Ice Cream on their cone; they must have de-Friended each other at least 100 times each during the span of the week. Every time we needed to get in the car – which was a lot, as our house was far enough from the Beach to require a drive – the kids, led by E, would scramble into different car-seats, and inevitably one of them would be sitting somewhere where someone else wanted to sit, and the cries of “No Fair!” would start loudly and in earnest. Whenever that got settled, we would have about ten minutes of relative calm – the length of the drive to the Beach – and then we would dismount them all from the car, hoist our two or three bags of beach-related stuff, and lug it all across the sand toward an area where we could settle. The sand would invariably be too hot for at least one of the children to walk on, so we’d have to carry at least one of them, too. By the time we actually got to a place where we could set up our encampment, at least a half-hour would have elapsed, at which point we were all already exposed to an unhealthful amount of Ultra Violet Rays, because we didn’t put the Sunscreen on before we left, because did I mention how complicated leaving our house was?

Our time at the beach was essentially just a sunnier version of the rest of our time on vacation. The kids all had different Agendas – except for that brief moment when we first got settled, when they all uniformly wanted a Snack. J, for the most part, wanted to swim, except when he wanted to bother G in whatever he was doing. G thought the water was too cold and wanted to fly his new Kite, which, as it turns out, is rather difficult to accomplish on non-windy days, of which we had surprisingly many, probably because one of our Great Ideas for the week was to fly a Kite (and yes, the Mary Poppins fans are correct in their suspicions as to where we got this idea). E was mostly agreeable, except when she too joined in on the Fights or did things to make poor G upset, like mess up his sand castles or steal seashells from his collection. It’s impressive how fast she is picking up being The Youngest.

Notwithstanding all of this Fun and Awesomeness, we would, at some point, need to pack everyone up and go back home. This process was very similar to the process of getting everyone there, except that we were all wetter, sandier, tired, crankier, more disagreeable, and typically hungry, which of course meant we would need to figure out what to do to eat. Now, decision-making always presents challenges, and decision-making with children presents some distinct ones. But decision-making with children with regard to food while everyone is hungry in an unfamiliar setting is really not a place you want to be. One time, we decided we would eat out – and if there is a worse idea than going to a restaurant with small children, it is going out to a restaurant with small children after they have been to the Beach. There was one extremely brief period during this trip in which we appeared to have things under control, so much so that another diner commented kindly on how well-behaved our children were. L immediately shot the gentlemen a Dirty Look. I was confused by this, so I asked her, “hey, why’d you give that guy a Dirty Look?”, to which she responded that he just Totally Jinxed us. And she was right; shortly after the comment, all the Wheels came off. That, friends, is Motherly Instinct. In hindsight, what a Jerk that guy was.

We made sure that we experienced new kinds of Disasters, too. After one particularly active morning in which we rode our bikes and went to the Beach (we were going to make use of that damned Bike Rack yet), we were certain that the children’s eyes were heavy enough to give us all a much needed afternoon Nap. We executed our plan flawlessly. We kept them awake during the whole trip home, singing loud renditions of very repetitive songs (did you know that if you’re happy and you know it, you’re face will surely show it?) and bribing them with sugary treats of various kinds. It worked – they all remained awake, but with very sleepy, Nap-persuadable eyes – and when we got home, a small, perhaps 2-hour long victory was within our grasp…

Then J got out of the car and got stung by a Bee.

If I needed any confirmatory evidence that J is indeed my son, I got it in his reaction to the sting. Now, getting stung by a Bee, particularly for a young kid, is a Serious Matter. But for me and J, this is beyond Serious. While J screamed his curly-haired head off, I, ostensibly keeping my cool, performed a Medical Examination of his hand, where he got stung. I looked closely at his hand and quickly realized I had no idea what I was looking for, and did I mention J was screaming, so I frantically started coordinating an Emergency Trip to the Hospital, ready to call 9-1-1 at any given moment, all the while searching on my phone for how to deal with Bee Stings, and having pretty much no success. I looked at L and said, with unsubstantiated authority, OK, I think we need to go to the Hospital, not knowing where that actually was. At this point, L, for some reason, felt the need to step in and direct us all to Calm Down. The Stinger, as it turned out, was not lodged in J’s hand, and even if it was, there was no need for a Hospital Visit. She directed me to go to the local Rite Aid to pick up some Ibuprofren [sic], to help with the pain, which I did by racing down the street in our Duct-Taped Minivan, bobbing and weaving in and out of traffic like the Driver of an Emergency Vehicle, then running into the Rite-Aid and taking only 10 minutes to find where the Ibuprofren was. And even though none of the heroics described in the immediately preceding sentence actually happened, and even though L managed to calm down J while at the same time dealing with G and E, who at this point were definitely not napping and wouldn’t do so for the remainder of the trip, it should be clear at this point which Parent saved the day.

It wasn’t all Chaos and Disorder. At some point at night (typically far later than recommended for children of their age), they did fall asleep, and those hours were peaceful, even if we slept during every possible minute of them, being completely and totally mentally and physically exhausted. During one of our few windy evenings, we were able to get G’s Kite up in the air, underneath a good, steady wind stream. That kept his attention for a good while, and we kind of took our eye off him. When we looked back, before we knew it, he had unwound all 500 feet of the Kite-string, and his Kite was soaring as high as it could, up toward the pink-tinted clouds, and I can still vividly see his proud, smiling face, gently lit by the remaining light of the setting sun. J got his first addictive thrill of swimming in ocean water (remember that?), challenging the waves and riding them when he could time them right. And then there was E, going along with everything that was going on, singing with gusto about Spoonfuls of Sugar and joining her brothers in pointing out cool cars on the road (i.e. cars for which Spoilers are appropriate, unlike our Minivan, a problem we appear to have fixed). We must have driven past 1000 Corvettes, because we heard from her, at least 1000 times, “Mommy, Daddy, I saw a Cor-ette!”

In the end, I suspect our Family Vacation went the way many, many others go: lots of logistics/small crisis management, little by way of relaxation and personal recuperation. We can hardly say we are coming back to Ordinary Time fully (or at all) re-charged and Ready to Go; and, if we are being honest here, we would have appreciated an afternoon, or even an hour, on one of those cafe garden patios, talking about the way the Wind was blowing, or at least about something other than whether we could Skip The Baths tonight (saltwater is cleansing, isn’t it? It can’t be any worse than Kiddie Pools, can it?). But if we really step back from it all, it’s clear that, at some point, sooner than we think or want, there will be plenty of time for that; kids, after all, grow up incredibly fast. For that reason, our Vacation was really, really fantastic, and we wouldn’t have had it any other way.