Oh, How Little Kids Need! (And How Needy They Are)
At the end of July we embarked on a two week road trip through California. It was ambitious—especially with a 4 and 1 year old—but also an adventure. Yet I also forget that, almost by definition, every adventure has its share of struggle—which is part of what makes it an adventure—something you must overcome to reach your goal, and while it’s not fun in the moment, you eventually look back on it with joy and pride.
We left on Tuesday afternoon and drove from Portland to Yreka, California (different that Eureka and I’m still not sure how you pronounce it) just north of Mt. Shasta. Along the way Evangeline threw up outside of Canyonville and we were forced to eat Burger King while we cleaned her and the car up. We felt so bad for Evangeline because she didn’t know what was happening, or have the words to describe what this new sensation was, and so she just sat there groaning in the back seat for 30+ minutes. She felt better once she got cleaned up however, and then spent the rest of the meal playing with her new Paw Patrol characters in the rocks of the Burger King parking lot.
We then drove to Yosemite National Park where we met Cat’s cousins from L.A. and camped for four nights. On Saturday I climbed Half Dome and it was quite the adventure, a grueling 17 miles and 5,000 feet of elevation—not to mention the cables at the end were a lot scarier and physically meaning than I thought they would be. I was toast on the way down. Yet another example where the struggle makes the reward more “worth it” it to some degree. Unfortunately, a wildfire outside of the park forced us to leave a day early because of all the smoke. We spent a random night in a hotel in Stockton before heading to San Francisco area where we stayed with Cat’s aunt and uncle. Evangeline loved the “big city” and the parks in it. We then made our way down to Los Angeles and Pasadena where visited our friends who had just had a baby. Finally, we drive to Los Olivos, just outside of Santa Barbara, where I had a cousin getting married. We stayed in Buellton outside the Santa Ynez Valley which is where they filmed that film Sideways. We stayed here three nights before heading back up the 101 to Redding and then home. Whew. It was a lot with kids. But fun. But also a lot.
Along the way I was reminded of how little kids need and yet how needy they simultaneously are. One of the many paradoxes of children. Like how you love them, mostly, and other times wish they’d never been born. The girls loved all the simple things of travel us adults take for granted—hotel baths, hotel pools, fast food, throwing rocks into the river. What was their favorite part? Was it the ocean? The Golden Gate Bridge? Yosemite? No! It was that one playground that was pretty much exactly like all the other playgrounds. It’s the simple joys of life for them, no matter how much we tried to plan fun activities for them, which is both frustrating and funny at the same time. And yet the girls were also needy—mostly in the car of course, naturally. They couldn’t get their own snacks or even turn their Ipads on to watch something without needing our help: “It’s not loud! I can’t see! I want different episode, etc.”
Just yesterday I took the girls to Oxbow Park just outside of Portland to escape the heat—I just wanted to do something different besides splash pads and playgrounds. And once again, it was an adventure. We played at the playground for a while (which they loved) before heading down to the river. This is where it got dicey though. It was a steep bank down to the river and not a lot of nice sand (mostly rocks), not to mention the current of the river was still flowing fairly fast. I didn’t feel comfortable taking care of both them in the water and they kept falling over in the rocks and we packed it up in less than half an hour. Oh well. I had tired them out, right? (It all would have been fine, by the way, had they not both fallen asleep in the short thirty minute car ride home and then refused to go back to sleep the rest of the afternoon. Now I was tired and they were wired and this was not a good combo.)
All this to say, I’m looking forward to the day in the adventure of kids when the struggle of raising the little ones is finally over. But as my kids keep reminding me, it’s not the big destinations of life or markers that matter, it’s the little things in front of you—like free rocks to play with in the Burger King parking lot, picnics in the sand.