I knew keeping up my blog while I was away on our family trip would be hard. I mean, I wasn’t planning on posting regularly, but I thought that would be more by choice than anything else. I figured, the kids would be in bed at a semi-reasonable time (once the jetlag wore off, hahahahaha) and we’d have to stay in the hotel room with nothing to do, so… if I felt like it, I could write something while Mike watched TV.
Oh, how naive I was pre-trip.
You see, it’s not just that Mazzy and Harlow’s internal clocks are eight hours behind or that we are all sleeping in one room (so any laptop use would have to be done covertly or in the bathroom), it’s that the kids DON’T SLEEP AT ALL. Or more accurately, by the time we get the kids to FINALLY go to sleep, Mike and I are both exhausted and fall right asleep as well. Usually, with the kids lying on top of us in one big jet lagged pile.
What’s that? We should have gotten a “suite” you say? We did. But “suite” doesn’t always mean a separate room. It might mean that your room is separated by a low partition or in our case, a large rotating television.
Also, in all three rooms we’ve stayed in on our trip, the girls are expected to sleep in one bed or one pull out couch. There is a reason I put my kids into separate beds when it’s lights out at home— it’s because Harlow and Mazzy together in a bed CAN NOT SETTLE.
“Settle down!” Mike yells from across the room. His unspoken words being— “I’m trying to watch a movie with headphones on my iPad!” This is followed by a brief period of silence, then giggles, then whispering, then low talking, then shouting, then wrestling and then someone yelling “Owwwww!!!” because they’ve been thrown from the bed.
“Come on, guys!” I yell. “If you can’t settle down, I will have to separate you!” The regret hanging in my words as soon as they leave my mouth. You know what “separate” means when you are all sharing one hotel room?
It means that one kid sleeps with Dad and the other sleeps with Mom and all the parental use of iPads and laptops must shut down immediately. Do not pass go, do not collect $200 and definitely do not finish watching the Season Finale of House of Cards. Every night I’ve ended up “sleeping” with Harlow, who tosses and turns and sings and tries to play games like no one has said, “HARLOW GO TO SLEEP!!!!” at least five thousand times.
When Harlow finally loses her battle with sleep and passes out (after literally hours), it’s usually with her head on my belly, her arm twisted around my leg and her foot pinning my elbow for good measure. There is no getting back up and checking email or writing a blog post in the bathroom. The only thing I can do is go to sleep myself. Which I do. Gladly. Because vacationing with kids is EXHAUSTING.
Wonderful, yes. But exhaustingly wonderful.
This is a big trip for the girls and for us as a family. I knew it would be challenging but the days have mostly been pretty amazing. There are meltdowns and disagreements but all normal negotiable stuff. It’s the nights that make it hard. Because after a long day of sightseeing as a family, the last thing you want is a night with no sleep or time for yourself.
All this is to say— sorry I haven’t blogged much since I left over a week ago. I didn’t send out the weekly newsletter and this month’s swag bag will be a little delayed. However, I have been having a blast posting pics on Instagram (@mommyshorts) and documenting my trip on Snapchat (ilanawiles). I hope you have been following!
Tonight, I was finally able to open my laptop after several days of it remaining shut. Harlow is asleep directly to my left and I am awake enough to write. Woohoo!!! But now I’m realizing, the other added difficulty of using your laptop in a hotel room at night, is that the battery power dwindles quickly and the plugs are horribly placed and your phone is currently charging with the one remaining adapter.
I’m currently at 7% battery power. I think I should post before my laptop powers down on it’s own.
Or before Harlow turns over and traps my typing hand with her foot.
This is the exact same experience my husband and I have. Each one must sleep with a child. Glad to know we are not alone! We use hotels for overnight stays while on the road so getting a 2 room suite isn’t worth the expense. Staying in hotels is challenging. I wonder when it gets easier? When they are teenagers???
We usually try to get a suite, I just let the kids lay in bed watching TV until they fall asleep. I learned long ago to let go of sleep routines while traveling. I would rather enjoy my time ve
Thank you for trying to blog, but just enjoy yourself! Your Snapchats have been so amazing!!! Please please please post your itinerary (as detailed as possible) when you get home. My husband and I absolutely want to take our kiddo to some of these places but I never remember to write down the exact locations before the Snapchat story is gone…
thanks for trying to blog while you are on vacation but i am sure we will all be here when you get back and we will all be eager to hear all about the trip.
Every time we get a hotel room we call and specifically ask if the suite has two seperate rooms with a door. We’ve been told yes, and shown up to the tv barrier. We ended up switching to a handicap accessible room that had a huge closet. Dismantling the automatic light and sticking my daughter in the closet for the night. Don’t worry it had an air vent.
When we traveled to Copenhagen and Stockholm for my husband’s business trip, we used AirB&B. It was amazing! Full kitchens, bedrooms and separate living rooms (mostly!). I know this was a trip compliments of their travel bureau, but if anyone plans on doing this kind of travel with kids, I can recommend it enough. It added an extra cultural layer to our trip, seeing how people lived in other countries. We stayed in apartments owned by people who had children of their own, so we knew it would be family friendly. It wasn’t any more expensive (actually turned out to be cheaper than the one hotel that we stayed in. Just a tip!
Enjoy the rest of your stay!!
Ditto to the Airbnb or another apt rental service! We travel a lot and are done with hotel rooms. No fun at all with kids. Having them in a separate room and then being able to just chill in the kitchen or living room makes all the difference. Plus it’s a whole lot cheaper!
Your girls look so big and grown up in the above picture!
We just spent a weekend in Orlando for a conference and I took the kids and husband along for fun (or to torture the husband, not sure which). We made the HUGE mistake of getting the standard room rather than the suite – which meant three kids in bed with me and daddy in the other bed blissfully unaware of the kicks to the head and knees in the back. Remind me to update his life insurance policy before I take him out…errr…he meets his untimely… errr..ummm… nevermind. 🙂 One thing I did learn from some friends of ours is to take sleeping bags for the kids with air mattresses… my frineds have all sworn by this. I may try it next time too because the two littlest are too big for pack and plays anymore, and I like my sleep dagnabbit!!!
I’m terrified now. We are headed to Iceland in four weeks with our 16-month-old. The best we could request was a baby cot in our rooms. Oh, and seven hotel rooms over ten nights. It will be an unforgettable trip, but I’m afraid none of us will sleep!
And if this is a sponsored trip, I’m sold! Copenhagen and Bergen are on my list for future travel is only for those amazing playgrounds. If I’m traveling with kids and will end up at playgrounds anyway, I want them to be special!
I went on a four-day work trip last year to Pittsburgh and brought along my husband and (then) one and a half year old son. (I wouldn’t have normally, but I was traveling the week after as well and I couldn’t be away from my kid for two weeks in a row.) Because it was a work trip, I had the most basic hotel room possible, so not suite for us! It was such a pain in the ass. We switched off who got to leave the room to hang out in the lobby.
In terms of traveling with kids who are too big for pack-and-plays but too small for their own beds or you don’t want to share, you can get inflatable mattresses with raised sides. They’re great.
[…] That night, we ended late and the kids were starving so we just took them to a random place on the way back to the hotel for a quick bite. I cannot tell you the name. Then we tried our best to get the kids to sleep all in one room with us. You know how that went. […]