I love to travel.
I have always loved the adventure that travel brings. The idea of discovering the “attitude” of a new city or the beauty of some natural wonder I’ve never seen… fills me with anticipation every time. The destination doesn’t matter. What matters is that I’m going to discover this new-to-me, unknown place. Truly, this is surprising when you consider one thing I love about nursing is the defined rules of action. Pretty much every situation, once you learn the framework, has a goal to work toward.
When my children were smaller, it was very hard for me to travel. Sure, it could have been the “not enough money” feeling or the “not enough time off work” dilemma. Really, it was a much darker problem.
I couldn’t handle the chaos of traveling with small children.
I loved spending time with my kids (and still do) but they depend on their parents for everything, as it should be. My ultra-organized, neat and tidy, type “A” brain had difficulty processing how to be prepared for what they could possible challenge me with if we did travel. For some reason I needed to feel that I could and would meet their every need so they were constantly happy. I needed defined rules and expectations to care for them. How very naive of this young mother. That is not at all what God planned for any parent. Just saying.
On one isolated occasion we did become bold enough to take my kindergarten girl, my preschool boy, and my nine-month-old baby boy to a water park resort for a three day weekend. We thought it would be fun.
We thought wrong.
No sooner had we arrived, than the baby began having diarrhea. With every passing moment, I knew this had been a mistake. My husband kept trying to take the older two kids swimming while I tried to care for the fussy baby in the hotel room. Thank goodness for Walmart because I made numerous trips there. We ran out of diapers, we needed the electrolyte water eventually, and finally it was time to pack up and go home. One last problem, my baby boy didn’t have any clean clothes left. The clothes were all soiled and in Ziplock bags ready to be washed the moment we arrived home. What now?
Never fear, my sweet kindergarten daughter saved the day! She had brought along her favorite dolly, “Purple Baby“. An oversize dolly, this doll wore real baby clothes in a 6 month size. “Purple baby” had packed her suitcase with a pink one-piece outfit just perfect for my baby boy. So, I convinced my daughter to share with her brother in his time of need. She thought it was a great idea to dress her baby brother in dolly clothes…
So, I gave up on the idea of travel.
I couldn’t stand to leave the kids at home because I missed them. I couldn’t stand the overwhelming idea of taking them along. But as they grew, I started to want it again. My sense of adventure slowly returned as the memories of “the bad trip” faded. I began to search for how I could introduce my children to this idea of fun and discovery. As I talked to my husband, we thought it through for a very long time…until we had a lightbulb moment.
What started as a joke, ended up solving our problem.
We made a nursing care plan for traveling with children. We used the framework of nursing theory (very familiar to us) to get our kids out the door in a manner we could cope with. Airline tickets and lodging for six? Way too expensive. Low-sodium, healthy eating plan away from home for a week? That can’t really be done, can it? Buy a camper? Well, we have nothing to pull it with and weren’t really looking for debt. Oh, but wait, tent camping. Maybe, just maybe, we should try this…
(more on this adventure to be posted soon…)
The post Two Nurses Go Camping (Part 1- travel with kids) appeared first on Salty Life Mom.