Vacation

Well, the wife and my two daughters left yesterday afternoon for a five-day visit with her parents down in South Carolina. We spent all morning laundering, packing, herding, feeding, bathing, dressing, then loading the car, driving the highways, negotiating the airport. They made their four o’clock flight no problem, lifted off without delay, and landed down in Savannah a little after six, on schedule. Nana picked them up, the start of their nearly week-long adventure.

It’s also my vacation, too, but I’ll get to that in a second.

Of much concern was how Patch would handle the flight. Vocal Patch. Very vocal Patch. The Little One, now, she’s an experienced traveler. This is her third flight, and she’s not even five years old. Twice down to South Carolina, and once to Puerto Rico. She knows what to expect. With much excitement and fanfare the other day she picked out her color and flavor gum (cinnamon Orbit) to chew when her ears start altitude poppin’. Her Hello Kitty backpack loaded to the point of bursting with toys, games, coloring books and stuffed animals, her Elmo sunglasses firmly on her forehead, she’s ready for the excitement of air travel and knows to keep close to Mommy.

Patch, on the other hand, is an unknown quantity here.

Over the past week she’s developed a very bad habit, one she probably picked up from the other girl she’s with regularly at daycare. Out of the blue, for no apparent reason, she shout/screams a piercing, ear-splitting yell. She’s not in pain, not hungry, not uncomfortable, not ignored, not alone. But she’ll do this randomly. It especially bugs me during car travel, ’cause in my car it somehow gains decibels by a factor of ten. After our thirty-minute commutes back and forth to the sitter I got a thudding headache. We try to shush her calmly, try to ignore her when she does it, try to place a gentle finger over her lips, all to no effect, so far.

We were very worried this might be the case in the closed and cramped quarters of the plane my wife would be taking.

Plus, Patch still has some fluid in her ears. The pediatrician gave us some antibiotics and some baby Allegra to possibly alleviate any symptoms of pain. But who can tell? Patch certainly can’t explain to us calmly what she’s feeling. And who can tell if the airport, with their crazy inexplicable security protocols nowadays, who can tell if they’ll even let my wife on board with her bag o’ baby drugs? She made sure to get a typewritten note from the pediatrician on his letterhead stating that the drugs were necessary for the baby’s well-being.

Our ace-in-the-hole, our nuclear option, our mutual-assured-destruction, was a pacifier. We don’t raise our children with pacifiers (for a whole host of reasons we won’t go into on this post). Doesn’t mean various sitters haven’t used them on our children, particularly Patch during her hugely fussy first-three-months-of-existence. But my wife broke down and bought two pacifiers as a last-ditch way of dealing with nine-month-old meltdowns.

And you know what? What could have made for a nightmare flight for not only Patch and my wife but, oh, say, a hundred other innocent travelers, turned out to be a piece of cake. Patch handled it with aplomb. No pacifiers needed. She ate on the plane which took care of the ascent phase, and spent the two hours playing with a key chain.

Three cheers for Patch.

So, the wife and the two little ones are in South Carolina, for five days of alternating beach-and-pool mornings, barbecues, fireworks, yes, a little bit of shopping and personal care, a cocktail party (after the children are in bed, of course), and general relaxation.

That last part brings me back to this wondrous fact: It’s my vacation, too.

Yes, I have a Honey-Do list. Wanna see it?

* Mow lawn, clip hedges, sweep deck, weed walkway
* Install child gates
* Get wife’s car serviced at local garage
* Dentist’s appointment on Monday
* Catalog DVDs in this spinning thingie
* Fix the door on the TV cabinet
* Call a plumber to get downstairs toilet fixed
* Clean grill and fix broken handle on it
* Tighten ceiling fans

Not a bad list, eh? If I can do two a day, I should be able to manage it, me, who can barely turn a screw. The key is this: everything gets done faster without those little plaintive Hey Daddy’s. I love my children and will miss them terribly, but I kinda like the productivity attained by being able to work without distractions.

Also, I can spend the remaining time, as unlimited as I want, reading, writing, and working online. Guilt-free. In fact, I got my own list, too. There’s a writing project I’ve code-named Bruegel (you may find out more later), a website idea that I am in the middle-stages of completing (you probably will find more out later), and continued daily blogging, of course.

I still have about fourteen or fifteen books out of the library I’m working my way through (I read through half of one last night, breaking only for some ice cream and the beginning of Return of the Jedi). And I am hooked on an excellent book, The Godwhale, which I am really looking forward to reviewing. Great stuff. Gotta research that author later.

Everybody’s been knocking on my door and ringing up the phone to try to get me to do something. Unlike most people, social events generally give me anxiety. I am comfortable being alone. I like being solitary. I am almost downright reclusive. Do not fret that I am alone. Do not worry for my sake that I might “have nothing to do.” I welcome the five days of peace, quiet, and silence.

Though I know in a day or two I’ll be walking from empty room to empty room, wondering what my little ones are up to.