Tag: family vacation

NYC in a Preschooler’s Posse

We just got home after a week-long family vacation in New York City! I’ve been to New York City three times before, but this was my first visit as part of a preschooler’s posse. Our little Diva, with all of her four and a half years, was the central figure around which all activities were planned. If she wouldn’t like it or eat it or wait for it, then we didn’t do it. By we I mean, Mommy, Daddy, Gramma, and Grandpa aka The Posse.

My husband and I have declared New York our most successful vacation since Diva came home from the hospital.

I understand there are some people who might balk at spending a week in New York in the service of an illiterate, cookie-craving overload, but the fact we were willing to put the Diva’s needs first and foremost is why our trip was a resounding success for everyone involved.

You have to understand I’m not calling my child Diva for lack of a more creative nickname. If we define diva behavior as being irrationally demanding and prone to outbursts over minor inconveniences while assuming she is the center of everyone’s universe, then most preschoolers are divas. In addition, my daughter has some residual effects from an extended stay in the NICU which has left her “fight or flight response” on a very light trigger. Not her fault but still, her easy trigger leaves everyone in her posse scrambling to avoid both the fit and blunt objects likely to be thrown when an unexpected change in plans occurs. So the title Diva fits. And nobody wants a diva to start throwing or smearing snot on things in an art museum.

Our first consideration for the Diva was housing. To accommodate our Diva’s need for a quiet, calm retreat after a super stimulating day, we got out of Manhattan and rented a house in Queens. Corona is a delightful neighborhood bustling with families and charming restaurants filled with locals who seem to burst into song on a fairly regular basis. Between the Italian serenade we got over breakfast one morning and the Latin dance music pouring out from the restaurant across the street, Corona felt like living in a musical.

The hour subway ride into Manhattan or the car service were a small price to pay for the luxury of having a house with a den and backyard patio. The Diva is highly prone to outbursts when tired, so we wrapped up our sightseeing around 5pm everyday and spent the nights hanging out at the house. It was a stress-free way to end each day and allowed us to assume the role of local New Yorker for the week.

What did my Diva want out of a week in the Greatest City in the World? Playgrounds.

Our week in New York was a tour of playgrounds and any museums that happened to be close by, starting with the Science Playground at the New York Hall of Science. This hands-on museum geared toward young kids was just down the street from our house in Queens. Even many of the indoor exhibits were basically highly educational playgrounds, particularly the exhibit on physics in sports. My daughter particularly loved the rope jungle gym and giant see-saw bridge.

Our second day was all about the dinosaurs at the Museum of Natural History but before we got into the museum, a detour through Central Park led the Diva to Diana Ross Playground. I swear she has sonar for playgrounds. We did manage to get inside the museum with the promise of dinosaurs and the special exhibit “Dinosaurs Among Us” was a highlight of the trip. The exhibit wants people to understand that dinosaurs are actually still around. We just call them birds today.

Turns out dinosaurs were basically demon chickens.

The Diva enjoyed literally yanking her posse from one amazing feather-covered dinosaur recreation to the next. It wasn’t until we hit the gift shop that the first meltdown occurred. There was no stuffed velociraptor.

The near hour of tears shed over the unattainable stuffed velociraptor is a good example of how I know without doubt the Diva’s meltdown’s are not an attempt at manipulation or the result of being overindulged. Because she could have gotten any toy in shop. After thirty minutes of sobbing in the most profound disappointment, the Diva had four posse members ready to drop all their disposable income. But she didn’t want anything the store had to offer. She was fixated on a stuffed velociraptor and couldn’t let it go. The best her posse could do was offer a relatively quiet spot near the triceratops skeleton and some chocolate chip cookies. Eventually, she accepted some small dinosaur figurines and a blue whale viewing.

Day three’s plan to see the knights’ armor at the Metropolitan Museum of Art was immediately abandoned upon sight of the Ancient Playground next door to the museum. The playground’s stonework gave it a castle feel and the Diva unsurprisingly played for over two hours. What did surprise everyone was her question while heading back to the subway late afternoon “When are we going to see the knights in their armor?” When a four-year old expresses interest in an art exhibit, you go before she can change her mind or fall asleep in someone’s lap. The coolest part was the horses’ armor.

We took one day off from playgrounds to see Aladdin at the New Amsterdam Theater which is right at the Times Square metro station. While Aladdin was beautiful and fun and the Diva is still talking about the flying carpet, the chaos of Times Square was not fun or beautiful. A prematurely pitched lollipop, which she hadn’t liked in the first place, caused the second major meltdown of the trip.

The sidewalks of Times Square are really not conducive to calming and soothing, so phones were whipped out and frantic searches for nearby cafes, preferably with chocolate-chip cookies, were conducted. An early retreat back to Queens resulted in take out of some of the most amazing Mexican I’ve had in my life from the local joint across the street. (Seriously, I’m on the Queens’ bandwagon primarily for the food.)

After Times Square the posse had learned our lesson. Playgrounds and parks are enjoyable. Crowds and a sea of fifty foot iPads are not. This lesson led us to Brooklyn Bridge Park and the Main Street Playground near Manhattan Bridge. The Diva loved the nautical themed playground, and the posse loved the views. We rode Jane’s Carousel and had lunch at a little bistro just off the park. The breathtaking views are a great antidote to the effects of paying $4 for a single glass of coke that’s fifty percent ice.

To complete our admittedly small sampling of New York City playgrounds, we went to Billy Johnson Playground in Central Park just north of the zoo. This comparatively humble playground features a 45 foot granite slide that the Diva went down at least twenty times. It was a gorgeous day and Central Park was lush and green. When we stumbled upon the Central Park Zoo after leaving the playground, there was no debate. The Diva bonded with a spirited puffin and enjoyed a hyper-active sea lion.

We ended our week in a New York with a trip to the Rose Center for Earth and Space and a show in the Hayden Planetarium. While the Diva was awed by the concept of a movie on the ceiling, the New York Hall of Science is infinitely more accessible to the preschool aged public. Although, her posse thought the planetarium was awesome.

I hope I haven’t given the impression that being in the posse of a small diva is only stressful. It does require planning and a willingness to abandon those plans, but the plus side of a diva is that they are energetic, passionate, and expressive people who draw you into their world. My Diva manifested such joy after seeing her first dog walker, I thought we’d have to follow him around the city.

It’s also because of my Diva, that my husband and I have completely reimagined what living in NYC must be like. We spent a week in the “concrete jungle” running and climbing around parks. The local government has done an amazing job of providing outdoor resources for children and family throughout the city. I’ve spent my entire adult life living in apartments in cities, Washington D.C., Rio, and now Vitoria, and none of those cities have provided the public playgrounds and green spaces like New York. (Rio and Vitoria’s governments do not get credit for simply building their cities on beaches. In fact, negative points to you Rio and Vitoria for letting your outdoor spaces get septic.)

Now if only it didn’t cost a fortune to buy a home in New York. And the winter. If the government could do something about winter, then I could definitely see the Diva and her posse living there.

June 3, 2016
Bible Belt Road Trip

Growing up in Atlanta, road trips were a big part of my childhood. In the summer we’d drive five hours to St. Simons Island on the Atlantic or maybe eight hours to Orlando. I’ve sat through the twelve hour drive to Washington D.C. many times. I’ve got family in Panama City, Florida so I’ve made that six hour trip at least a dozen times in my life.

But until this year every trip was made from the passenger seat.

January 2016 is now etched in my memory as the month I piloted my first road trip. For years, my husband and I have been content to get chauffered around or borrow cars during our holiday trip to Atlanta, but this year we rented a car. And I was the only licensed driver for it.

We rented a…honestly, I don’t remember the name. It was a Kia. It had a hatchback, four doors, and operated on gasoline. I’m not a car person.

The most impressive detail about the car was it’s near pocket-size. I’ve traveled enough to know that in many countries our Kia would have been considered normal-sized. Not so on an American interstate. Imagine your dining room table covered with water melons and one matchbox sitting in the middle of them. My family and I were inside the matchbox.

That’s what it felt like as I merged onto Interstate-285 around Atlanta, aka the scariest place in the United States. The road circles the city for 64 death-defying miles and is a training center for domestic terrorists.

My time skirting between 18 wheelers on I-285 in a freshman engineering class’s final exam with a screaming preschooler and frantic husband in the back seat was spent mostly in a semi-conscious state operating on pure adrenaline. It’s apparently standard operating procedure on 285 for freight truck drivers to allow about five feet of space between the truck and car in front, demonstrating complete indifference to the laws of Georgia, physics, and common sense.

My fellow Americans, you’re all worried about the wrong things. You’re not going to be blown up. You’re going to be flattened by an 18 wheel truck filled with hamburger buns.

My family and I survived that first hour and a half in the car and made it out of metro Atlanta. We left the traffic and everything else behind. Welcome to rural Georgia. We hope you enjoy our pine trees.

There is farm land in Georgia. Lots of it. But much further south. We were driving South-west toward the Florida panhandle, cutting across southern Alabama. It’s a route that doesn’t provide much in terms of scenery save for the occasional buildboard advertising Jesus or a strip club.

Even the exits disappear and fifteen minutes can pass before it’s even possible to get off the highway. A fact critically important when traveling with a four-year old who does NOT like to take bathroom breaks before her bladder is on the verge of exploding.

“There’s an exit with a McDonald’s ahead. Little Bit, do you need to go potty?”

“No.”

“Are you sure you don’t need to go potty?”

“No.”

“Does that mean you do need to go?”

“No.”

“So you don’t need to go pee pee?”

“No.”

“Why don’t we stop and you just try?”

“I said no, Mommy.”

Do I even need to write the conversation that happens two minutes past the exit?

Like most Americans, our bathrooms of choice are McDonald’s. Clean and available when literally no other restaurant is in a ten mile radius. Whatever else is true about the chain, their bathrooms are a service to humanity because the alternative to McDonald’s is a gas station.

Gas stations in South Georgia and Alabama. They’re actually quite fascinating as long as you’re traveling with your traditional nuclear family and don’t have an Obama sticker on your car. In addition to a fabulous array of retro snack food like Yoohoo and Hostess SnoBalls, there’s no end to the items decorated in camouflage: hats, shirts, tabbaco, koozees, lighters, and bibles. You can also pick up the monthly publication of mugshots of people arrested by the city police. It’s the society pages of Pittsview, Alabama. (That’s a real town, btw.)

My husband doesn’t find these places quite as charming as I do. In fact, his Brazilian instincts tell him to avoid at all costs isolated buildings in the middle of nowhere that would attract location scouts for a zombie apocalypse movie. He’s waiting for somebody to walk in with a gun. I told him to relax and just assume everyone walking in has a gun.

The upside to driving in this part of the state is the road itself. There’s no traffic. It’s flat, paved, and has clearly visible lines painted on it. I could drive on those roads endlessly. After so much time spent on Brazilian roads, I forget that “bumpy” is not a given description of car rides everywhere.

The US highway system is one of my husband’s favorite things about the country. He longs to take a cross country trip in the US. By comparison, my husband avoids extended road trips in Brazil as if his life depended on it. (Statistically speaking it kind of does. Roads in Brazil are more dangerous than gangs.)

Kendall Manor Eufaula, Alabama

By the time we were in southern Alabama our road was a smooth, two lane stretch running straight through Eufala, the undisputed scenic highlight. Eufaula, Alabama is home to 13,000 people and the most breathtaking collection of homes. They sit right off the main (possibly only) street through town.

Shorter Mansion

Mansions with wrap around porches, a turret or two, carriage houses. They line both sides of the street beckoning to tourists with their corinthian columns, tempting them to abandon reason and move to Alabama.

After Eufaula there’s not much else until Florida and the Gulf of Mexico. If you’re desperate to make those last two hours of driving pass by you can play road kill bingo. Prep your cards in advance with local species but you can only put oppossum on the card twice. They line the road like mile markers. On this trip, I spotted a raccoon, fox, armadillo, and coyote.

I drove the last hour in the pouring rain, at night, listening to the dialogue of Cinderella II for the

The Gulf of Mexico! Totally worth the drive.

third time in a row. When we reached my grandparents’ house, dinner was waiting for us on the table. I considered my first road trip a resounding success.

So much so, we did it all again three days later.

February 15, 2016
Fortaleza, Brazil: All-I-Can-Take at the All-Inclusive

Vacationing in Fortaleza, Brazil! A lot of a good thing.

I just got back from a family vacation in Fortaleza, Brazil. Our group was made up of three generations traveling from three different cities. It was a great trip and some memories will be with me forever. Which is only slightly longer than all the meat I consumed will be.

If Rio is looking to present an honest and endearing image of itself to the world during next year’s Olympic Games, they should build a barbeque pit in the international terminal and welcome each flight with a free lunch. “Welcome to Brazil! Have a plate of meat!”

A plate of meat, piled as high as it was wide, and a mojito made with a shot of white rum and 32 scoops of sugar was my lunch each day of our stay at the all-inclusive resort. Because once you’ve decided on the all-inclusive vacation, you’ve clearly made self-indulgence your primary goal for the week. No point in trying to hide it under a few leaves of arugula with olive oil.

Of course, visiting an all-inclusive with the entire family does limit the extent to which a person can self-indulge. Vacationing with my only-child who prefers me to any other person in the world, (She’s 4 and hasn’t met a wide range yet.) meant that I did not get the writing and reading time I would have liked. Being unable to pass out under a palm tree with a book on my face due to parenting responsibilities, I compensated by giving my stomach completely uninhibited and unrestrained access to every buffet at every meal.

Puddings, steak, french fries, cakes, risottos, Prosecco, sandwiches, salad, cappuccinos, tarts, omelets, shrimp, cheeses, mussels, chicken, soft drinks, sausages, pasta, mousse, fruit juices, fish, rice, beans, ice cream, croissants, pineapples, and pork were all consumed with reckless abandon. Lunch involved at least three plates; the grilled meat got it’s own plate of honor. Breakfast would take over an hour and I survived the long stretch between lunch and dinner by indulging in the afternoon tea, which included no tea but lots of cake. It was four days of eating as if life was free of consequences. All consumption and no exertion. It was glorious and delicious. I didn’t worry or go to the bathroom from Tuesday to Saturday.

Actually, I did start to worry on Saturday but not because I was feeling awful. I got worried because I didn’t feel awful. My rational-self kept waiting for the effects of my week-long bacchanalia to catch up with me. That part of me knew no person could eat with total abandon for long and not feel utterly disgusting. And that part of me waited. And waited. Meal after meal after, I filled my plate and went back for more, my taste buds rejoicing in how life could be if I didn’t care about staying a size 8 or living past 45, and I felt fine.

Saturday’s lunch was fish stew, fried shrimp, pork chops, rice, and french fries. I ate some of everything washing it down with a Coke. I enjoyed every bite and would have eaten a few more french fries if they hadn’t cleared the plates. On the walk back to the hotel, I wondered if I should seek help.

As we hid out from the tropical sun for a few hours in our room (because too much sun is really terrible for you), the hotel staff dropped off complimentary bottled water and coconut candy. My husband opened up one of the candies, took a small bite, and abandoned it on the table saying “Wow, that is too sweet.” So I immediately went over and finished it.

I popped the last bite in my mouth, swallowed it, and thought “I will never eat anything again.”

With that last bite of coconut candy, I hit my food wall. The full weight of every meal landed on me and left me in a fetal position on the bed. That was it. I was done eating. Possibly for the rest of my life. It took four and a half days, but I found my physical limit for food consumption.

I’m back home and in my normal routine that includes exercise and vegetables. My parents have gone back to the States and my daughter is back in daycare. I’m already looking forward to our next vacation, but perhaps a camping trip would be healthier.

I’ll bring the s’mores!!!

July 28, 2015