So I’ve been trying to figure out how to bring up the “Christmas issue” with my mom for a bit now. My dad died this March and this is going to be her first Christmas without him, and that’s going to be really hard. They’d only been in their new place for 8 months, so she’d only spent one Christmas with him there, but I don’t know if that’s better or worse or…?
Anyway, she brought it up herself last night and said she wanted to take a trip. I was figuring she meant me and her in a hotel room somewhere, and I’d leave the baby with my husband, but she wants all of us to go. Which is great, but where?
It’d be me, my husband, an 18 month old baby, and my 74 year old mom. She was thinking cruise, which does offer child care possibilities, but of course cruises are very popular over the holidays and ew, cruise. Plus we’d still have to travel some ways to board, as the only line that comes to Charleston is Carnival and NO NEVER AGAIN. So no matter what, we’re traveling with baby, by plane or by car.
We’re in Columbia, SC. She isn’t sure if she wants winter or tropical, but I think somewhere she never went with Dad would be best (but not somewhere they always wanted to go!). I suggested Asheville if she wants something near, or Montreal or maybe Quebec City if we’re getting on a plane? Upstate New York? Snow is a super-novelty for me, but my mom grew up in Pittsburgh so after almost 40 years in the south it’s a leeetle novelty but not something to travel for.
For warm, I don’t know, other than the whole cruise thing. Maybe a resort, which still offers the child care option? Puerto Rico? Miami? I mean, I don’t care, I’ll put Stinker on my back and go. I’m totally fine with just doing most of what we’d do normally, only we go to bed at 8 and stare at the Pack and Play. Little concerned about cramming a napping toddler into a cruise stateroom but people do it. (We did travel with him in June, when he was a little under a year, just to Charlotte for two nights for a comic book convention - it worked okay but he didn’t really nap.) Little guy is different every day, no way to predict what kind of a kid he’ll be in December.
So, suggestions? When I say “with a toddler” obviously I don’t really mean “activities for baby”, he’s just as amused by a paper napkin as he is by an amusement park. He eats literally anything that stands still long enough, so food is in no way a problem. Not sure my husband would even trust on-site child care but if that’s an option I think it would be nice to use it at least a little, which would put us in the cruise-big resort category. (No Disney - a) Farticus is too young to enjoy it and b) that’s the last trip they took together.)