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Published: September 22nd 2016
So, before life became all about things like mortgages, babies, school, careers, cooking, cleaning, cooking, drinking wine, more babies, jobs, cooking, cleaning, drinking more wine, working, bills the world seemed like a far larger place. A place to explore. Endless possibilities. So many cool places to visit, to explore, to experience.
Having children both expands your mind and shrinks your immediate world. Before I had children I was a lawyer - I travelled extensively within the UK for work, abroad for pleasure, I'd done the whole back-packing thing in my younger days, I've worked abroad, I've studied abroad, I'd done the swanky boutique hotel city breaks as I got older and the very necessary zonk-on-a-beach-package-holiday as a break from work, I'd done the week meditation retreat (with wine and skinny dipping) in exorbitant and picturesque Italian hills. Then I had two babies in the space of two years. Brilliant. They're amazing. I'm pretty amazing for growing and giving birth to the little creatures. Life is pretty darn amazing. But small. My daily orbit for several years, as I stayed home to give them my full care and attention, could be measured in miles in single figures. In fact most of the time I didn't even need to use the car. Again, it was pretty amazing. I am now on first name terms with 80% of the shopkeepers in my small town, managed to just about preserve my sanity through endless sessions of baby yoga/dance/gym/music, know every single footpath with my eyes closed from endless buggy walks to get them to drop the feck off to sleep please please please. You could be philosophical and spin it as some kind of 'local baby travelling', a staycation if you will - with the added 'bonus' of a small crying, puking companion. Frankly that would be a lie. When I wasn't too tired to be able to know my own name, let alone remember to take my purse to the shops (that's why I know all the shopkeepers' names and they still look at me like 'oh shit it's that woman who came in that time with yogurt in her hair who cried her eyes out because the baby needed a banana, but she'd left her purse at home so we had to say it was OK she could have the banana and pay us next time because quite honestly her crying was not proving good for business' and greet me with slightly too bright eyes and a rictus grin). Yes, I now know my local environs a whole heap better (quite handy because I hadn't lived here that long when I got pregnant), but at the same time I have wept bucket loads of tears at my husband getting to go to work around the country and almost lost the confidence in myself to go to new places on my own. My world literally shrank. Even though my entire world had now become contained in two gorgeous little boys and my husband, emotionally huge - geographically small.
When the boys were little we didn't travel abroad. For a variety of reasons - becoming a stay at home mum meant our income had been vastly reduced, Dan works away during the week so wasn't hugely keen to travel on his time off and if I'm honest I really don't think that travel with really small kids is anything other than a massive pain in the arse. If I can't get my child to sit still for the duration of ONE BLOODY MEALTIME then let's face it, there is no sodding way that a plane journey is going to be anything other than a disaster. If they manage to find fault with the food in Pizza fecking Express on the grounds that it is 'too spicy mummy' then I'm thinking that the street food of Mumbai isn't going to be met with finger-lickin' enthusiasm.
Holidays, for several years, conisted of lugging all the baby paraphenalia any further than from the house to the boot of the car to another house a few hours drive away, where we all pretend to have a great time because there's a beach in the vicinity. Although really the kids are thinking 'this telly is shit because it hasn't got all the sky channels on' or in tiny person talk 'wahhhhhhhhh wahhhhh wahhhhhhhhh iggle piggle wahhhhhh wahhhhh wahhhhhh. They wake up even bastard earlier than at home because there's no black out blind in the room, as the travel one got left in the porch at home when we were arguing over whether to pack aptimel or vodka, and then realise that in the arse end of the area called 'the countryside' there's no such thing as a telly box filled with all the cbeebies 'classics' that we have all come to know and 'love' and then the wahhhhhhhhhing rapidly reaches a level unheard of in rural Norfolk at 5:45am and you have to try and shush them for fear of waking unknown holiday neighbours. I'm thinking 'bloody hell there's no 4G and seriously, where is the nearest 24 hour supermarket because we forgot to pack calpol and one of them is teething like a bastard. We post a few arty beach shots and photos of cream teas to instagram and then at the end of the week, after enduring a 6 hour traffic jam on the M6 in which we all contemplate familial suicide we get home to a massive sense of relief. Life with tiny children is just about liveable at home. You just about maintain the fine balance between coping and checking yourself into any mental facility which will have you. Take home out of the equation and you're just doing the same old shit except in a location where you don't have any of the stuff you have so carefully amassed to help you get through the same old shit. Babies don't give a rats arse about exotic. Babies hate heat. We took Corey to Chester Zoo when he was nearly one and literally the only animal he got even vaguely excited about was a duck. A bloody duck which wasn't even a fancy double crested lesser spotted foreign duck. No, a common or garden - could have gone to the park and seen this for free - duck.
Then they grew. They now no longer poo their pants. They will eat food that isn't mush. They can speak and understand the world. Kinda (to all of the above). We've dabbled with foreign holidays over the last 18 months - we've been to Spain twice and stayed in the most awesome eco-dome in the middle of the Sierra de la Segura. We've climbed mountains in Austria. We've sunned ourselves on the Costa Brava. So far, so good. Increasingly the boys are enquiring about the world - Mitch has started learning Spanish, they both love geography and they both love the idea of adventure.
An unexpected inheritance this year meant that Dan and I decided to seize the moment and take that trip of a lifetime with our boys. See some of the sights we have always wanted to. Get to spend time together unencumbered by work, school, chores, bills. We are so so lucky to be able to take this chance and we are determined to make the most of every last minute.
But where to go? Our travel selection criteria probably deserves its own separate blog post....... but after much discussion...... we've settled on an itinerary which takes us from Manchester to - Barbados, Florida, New Orleans, Tennessee, Arkansas, Texas, Boston and Reykjavik. Flights are booked - career breaks agreed upon with our employers, we are pulling the kids out of school and endeavouring to home school them as we go along.
So, I was recommended by a dear friend to give this travel blog a whirl (my usual blog is tamsinsworld.wordpress.com ) so as to use it almost like a travel diary where our friends and family can keep track of us (*waves - hi friends and family*). First post of many. Hopefully future ones will have things like pictures of exotic beaches. They'll all have random musings too though.
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anonymous
non-member comment
Looking forward to reading about your adventures. I enjoy your honest and humorous writing style.