she's just sayin'

Thank the sweet baby Jebus, all of my travel fears were for naught. Drew couldn’t have been a more perfect traveler. Well, he probably could have, but he behaved exactly the way we dreamed about. Minimal fuss on the plane, save for takeoff and landing, and really, who could blame him? His poor little ears must have hurt. Thankfully it was nothing a little feeding couldn’t cure.

**Side note: forgive me for going off on a slightly bitter tangent, but can I take a moment to tell you about the awful return to New York landing we endured? There’s me, saddled with a cold, feeling as though my face is going to explode while we descend altitude, there’s the pilot who must have been compensating for *something* judging by the way he came barreling into landing full speed ahead, causing the plane to bounce as though we were caught in a turbulence cloud of doom, and there’s the baby, who could only be calmed down by nursing, which involved me desperately trying to hang onto him while the plane raises and dips, raises and dips, all the while my face contorting into uglier and uglier paroxysms of pain from the pressure. Oh the pressure!

But! Back to the matter at hand. The vacation! It was glorious. It was everything we love about a warm, sunny destination, just with the addition of swim diapers and even more sunscreen. It was board shorts and shades, frozen drinks, overpriced poolside food, damp lounge chairs, an abundance of striped towels, no concept of time, daytime flip flops and evening dresses, late night dinners, white sheets, white towels, white bathrobes, front desk name mispronunciation, sandy feet, sunscreen and a little baby in resort wear.

It was perfect, for all three of us.

The reservations have been confirmed. The checklist is written. The clothes are all laid out. The sunscreen is bought. The swimsuits have been begrudgingly tried on. We are ready for vacation. As ready as we’ll ever be, given that we’re traveling with a four month old. I’ve never been a nervous traveler, but it’s safe to say that this time around, I’m, well, I’m a little apprehensive.

I’ve been playing a silent movie in my mind, one in which I foresee all that could go wrong while traveling with an infant. We come stumbling through the terminal, lugging sixteen bags because one baby necessitates a very disproportionate amount of take-along items. The baby screams all the way through the security line, a hotbed for human nastiness own its own, now amplified with dagger-eyed stares directed at us and our screaming child. The baby somehow sets off the security alarm, resulting in a full-body pat down of chubby baby limbs that renders him wailing and inconsolable while I spew nastiness at the offending TSA officer. We take twenty five minutes to board, despite the pre-boarding privilege because we are tripping over our own carry-on items in a desperate search for the wipes—WHERE DID YOU PACK THE WIPES?!—because baby just pooped like he’s never pooped before just as we’re boarding the aircraft. And on and on, ad infinitum, right until we settle into our hotel room.

Of course, I’ve also silently pictured all that could go wrong post-flight during the course of our vacation, but I trust that your imaginations are capable of being as dire as mine, so we’ll leave it at that.

I’m sure that things will go far better than I’ve let myself imagine. They will, right? Tell me they will. I’ve been telling people that I kind of just want to get this vacation behind us so that we know what it’s like to travel with an infant and will be more confident travelers in the future with solid experience behind us. I’m not usually this way. I’m more of an ‘everything will be fine, don’t worry!’ kind of person. But. But. I just LOVE to travel. I want our child to love to travel. I want the addition of a child in our life to mark a seamless transition from being a traveling couple to a traveling family. So I guess I see this trip as setting the tone for our future, which I know is ridiculous because Drew will not always be four months old and in need of a warm boob to calm him down (which, BTW, nursing in public, I’m terrified of you too!).

I want—need?—this trip to go well so that we can continue to be inspired to see new places, not just the two of us, but all three of us. And if it doesn’t go well? I’ll just have to order enough poolside pina coladas to make the memories a little fuzzy.