August 16, 2011: Mexico survivors

Lesson from today: having a baby in your arms will help you get out of a parking ticket. Gavin and I were making our way to our car after sharing a very romantic dinner at Pronto! when I saw a parking attendant approach our car. I knew we were cutting it close to the meter time, but you try making a 2-year-old eat a grilled cheese sandwich faster. I yelled, "Hey! Wait! We're here! We're right here!" The woman turned around and looked at me with a degree of contempt that may or (more likely) may not have been warranted and then she looked at Gavin and turned to walk away saying, "It expired five minutes ago. Next time put more money in." As if I don't know how a parking meter works. But anyway, thanks lady. I would have acted more grateful but you didn't really give me a chance.

So, yes. Mexico, specifically Cancun, more specifically Riviera Maya. The #1 vacation destination for toddlers. To go alone, obviously. But like the total drags we are, Stacy and I accompanied Gavin on his international vacation adventure. We even brought along his Aunt Amanda. At the resort we met up with Lisa and Brenden. Stacy and I got sunburns. End of fun vacation story. Thanks for asking.

We've been back for a week now. I have been very neglectful about posting here and I apologize. But as I've said before, I don't know how anyone with children has time to write about having children. And I only have a child.

Vacationing with toddlers is unlike any other kind of vacation experience, for better and worse. Brenden is only 6 weeks older than Gavin, so in real life they're the same age. Getting to see the boys play together and getting to Lisa were my number one reasons for wanting to go on this trip. That it was in Mexico was not very important to me, though it did make my life a bit more difficult since the moment he heard we were going to Cancun my father flooded my inbox with links to news stories about the drug-related violence in Mexico and has tried to convince me that we'd all end up kidnapped and/or killed. Had we chosen, say, Orlando, Florida, my guess is that he'd have cooled it on the beheading stories.

But we were not kidnapped or killed, thankfully. Well, we were held hostage once, but not in a drug-cartel-related way. In fact, we had a good time. Not at the hostage taking, mind you. And it wasn't even a hostage taking, it just took a really, really long time to check into our hotel after we'd traveled for a long, long time to get there and then once we had our keys some lady from the hotel tried to sell us on some kind of time-share breakfast under the guise of "I'm here to help you" and we were all so tired, and so sweaty and Gavin had a full load in his pants and had been an angel all day, completely amazing, but he was starting to lose his patience as were we all but we were too polite to tell her where to go, plus we were fried from a day of traveling and didn't even have the sense to say, "Look lady, shut it. You can shove your 90 minute breakfast, your "free" t-shirts and tote bags, and your purple eyeshadow."

I should mention that before we even got to our rooms more than one employee there made a comment about how we were traveling without our husbands. So did Ms. Purple Eyeshadow, though to her credit she was very cool with the news that we were married to each other. Stacy and me, I mean. Neither of us is married to Amanda. She just loves to take vacations with other people's toddlers for some reason.

Lisa and Brenden arrived later that evening and luckily sidestepped the "hard sell" arrival. Brenden and Gavin were so, so cute playing together. For some reason Brenden never called Gavin by his name, he referred to Gavin solely as "Baby," though we did coax him into saying "Gavin" near the end of the trip ("Go-bin" is how he pronounces it), though he still never called Gavin anything but "Baby."

One of their favorite things to do was hide in the closet in the room and then come flying out screaming. I'm sure our neighbors loved us.

Gavin really blossomed as a swimmer while we were there. Brenden is already fearless when it comes to the water. He swims several times a week at home. Watching Brenden helped Gavin get over his trepidation a little bit. He went from only wanting to put his feet in to "jumping" into the pool (I say "jumping" because Gavin's jumps were much more controlled than Brenden's. He would jump to someone and that someone would catch him before he really could go under the water or anything. Where Brenden just jumps in, bobs under and happily comes right back up. They boys both had life vests on whenever we were in the water, by the way).

Brenden is also potty trained, so one of the highlights of the trip for Gavin was getting to watch Brenden go to the bathroom. Brenden was just as enthusiastic about this display. It got to the point that when he would have to go he would yell, "Baby! Baby! Pee!" alerting Gavin to what he was going to miss if he didn't hurry up. Gavin also got to see him poop while sitting on the toilet. Gavin's interest in using the toilet went up quite a bit while we were on vacation. He never actually went on the potty, but he would request to sit there a lot. Since we've been home he's shown more interest, as well, though nothing has happened output-wise. Tonight, in fact, he sat on his little potty while I read him four books. He didn't do anything, though he kept saying, "Poop coming." This is how I spend my evenings, folks. Actually, I can't complain. Gavin is an awesome kid and if there was anyone I'd want to sit next to while they took a dump it's him. And only him, actually. That list is really short.

Vacationing with toddlers means you really can't stay up late because you have to go to bed early. And working out a nap schedule. This was tricky. We had adjoining rooms so when it was nap time the boys would go down in one room and we'd stay in the other. Lisa is a genius and brought her baby monitor and that really helped. The first afternoon, we tried putting the boys down at the same time in their separate cribs, but that turned into a disaster. Okay, not a disaster, since that implies whatever my dad was envisioning would happen on this trip. But the boys would not settle down. Seeing each other was too much. Brenden had a really rickety old crib and he wanted very much to stand up in it and rock it back and forth. Gavin snagged the Pack N Play which was much more sturdy, though it did have a lot of holes in the mesh. Stacy called several times about getting another Pack N Play to replace the crib, but there was never one available. In fact, she guessed that some other guest probably left the Pack N Play behind and they didn't actually have any more. Stacy's Spanish is really good (she got a lot of compliments) but there are some things she doesn't quite know what to say. Like there was a problem with our sliding door that we needed someone to look at and she didn't know how to say "sliding door" so she had to say something like "the wall that is a window that is a door." In any case, Lisa didn't want Brenden to shake rattle and roll in that crib, so she opened the door and sternly told him to knock it off and lay down. When she came back we heard the tell-tale squeaking of the crib again and then we heard Gavin say to Brenden, "No! Lay down!" Brenden didn't listen. It took a long time but eventually we were able to get them to go to sleep by putting Gavin's crib in the bathroom, which made me feel a little neglectful, even though it wasn't. But once the boys couldn't see or hear each other all was well. Gavin slept in the bathroom during the rest of the trip.

There are some perks to traveling with a kid. We breezed through customs in Mexico, for example. Mind you, we waited forever in a super long immigration line (Gavin, again, was so, so good. He even fell asleep through part of it). But once we got to customs they put us in a special family line and they didn't even screen our bags. Nothing. Stacy showed the lady our form she'd filled out and we were waved through. I suppose I could be offended. "What we look too mom-like to be worth screening?" But I'm not. We got similar treatment on the way home, too. They guy said, "Any food?" And I said, "Some snacks." And he said, "Any meat?" And I said no and added that we were vegetarians. "Any vegetables?" he asked as he was waving us through. I'm telling you, we would be the perfect drug mules. We could have had dope strapped to our butt cheeks and no one would have known. Still, I'm glad we didn't risk it.

We did wait in a long immigration line once in Detroit. Gavin was good, but on the verge of losing it as he had had no nap and was getting hungry. "Gavin pull suitcase," he kept saying, insisting on pulling one of the two red roller bags we took with us (and into which I was able to pack everything because I am a totally obsessive compulsive packer which equals AMAZING AT PACKING SUITCASES. Thank you, thank you very much). In fact, "Gavin pull suitcase" was an oft-repeated refrain during this trip. He loves to pull the suitcase and taught Brenden the joys of pulling our suitcases, which they did throughout our hotel rooms. Amanda even developed a pitch perfect imitation, which I think really says something about Gavin's place in the family now as Amanda imitates everyone and she does it quite well. Often quite scathingly. It's her thing. Packing suitcases is mine. We all roll in our own ways.

Gavin talks so much now and he's got a unique sounding little voice. His inflections are interesting and he tends to really draw out some words, especially the last word or syllable in a sentence: "Gavin pull suitCAAAAASE."He also says "right here" a lot, which sounds like "rye hee." Laura and Jamie have decided that he sounds exactly like Miss Swan from Mad TV. Because they are obviously racist. But not far off, actually.

Another perk of traveling with a kid the family restroom. Oh, how I love it. Before I had Gavin it wasn't something I'd even noticed before. But at the Detroit airport the family restrooms are generally very clean and you get to be in there all by yourself. Or all by your family, anyway.

Speaking of family, I just read this tidbit on Yahoo News: "Britney Spears’s ex-husband [Kevin Federline] has started a family with a special-education teacher." Sounds like a good move. I hope he gets all of his special needs met. It's kind of frightening to think that this guy has at least 5 kids walking around with his DNA though. For their sake I hope they really prove the biology=destiny theory wrong.