Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Shhh

So I'm going to let you all in on a little secret, in hopes that you've got some advice for me. Here goes, I hate traveling with my kids. Now, I don't mind the car ride. (I refuse to fly with my kids ever again after the time Amelia bolted through security while she and I were being strip searched. Seriously. Don't ask.) I don't mind the eating out, or the sleeping in the hotel beds. I like getting to go out to new places, and doing things in new cities. What I hate is getting my kids to sleep in a foreign place. My kids sleep pretty well at home. They have their routines, and their comfy beds with their own babies and bears and pillows and blankies. And they sleep pretty well there. However, when you take them out of their room, they don't sleep so well. And because of that neither do the rest of us. We went to Tucson for Thanksgiving and while it was nice to see everyone, sleepwise it was horrible. None of us got any sleep. Anthony will not sleep in a room occupied by Jeff and me. The only naps he took were in the car. He was up and down all night long, his routines were off and it was awful. It took us all days to get back to our normal routine when we got home.

So now Jeff wants to go to visit some family. I totally understand his reasoning, he hasn't seen these family members in a long time, and they've never met our kids. I think it will be great to see everyone, but as soon as he mentioned it, I got a knot in my stomach about the sleep problems. when Amelia was this age, we really didn't travel. And when we had to, we stayed in a residence inn, they have suites that have a separate bedroom. Works well for us, the kid can go to sleep in one room, while we all stay in the other room until the kid is asleep. So I just checked it out, and it's soo expensive. With the discounts it's still going to be $250 a night. I think Jeff wants to go from Sunday through Friday. There is no way in heck we can afford that, we've been working really hard to pay off the credit card and van and get some money in our savings, I don't want to put thousands on the credit card again. If we went that route it would be 1250 for the hotel. Then you figure in gas, and food for a family of 4 eating out for 6 days and the cost goes up pretty quickly.

I'm really not sure how to deal with this. So internet help me out here. Got any advice? how do you travel with your kids. Am I the only one with children who refuse to sleep in the same room as me? They see me and think it's play time. Amelia was 3 or so before we could sleep in the same room as her.

I do the trip to see my family in Oregon once a year, but that only costs me the gas to get there, my mom has two extra bedrooms for us, and her house is free and she even feeds us. LOL And even that is pretty stressful.

And random question, what the heck is a POS system? I got three spam messages this morning about that. No clue what it is.

2 comments:

Di said...

If it is only Anthony, I would suggest first off asking the hotel for a crib. See if you can block off the crib, for example, open the closet door and either put him in there or kind of separate the rooms. You could also try a blanket and see if that helps.

You should try to get them used to sleeping wherever and whenever, believe you me, it makes life much easier!

Tiara said...

Sorry I don't have any real advice. When I took the kids to GA last summer, although it was tough at times to get them to sleep it wasn't a big issue. Both of my kids co-slept though too so sleeping in the same room or bed is nothing unusual for them. The hardest part for me was putting each to bed seperately, at home Bailey and I each take a kid...it was just them and me. Maybe try putting Anthony to bed in your room or you sleeping in his room to get him used to the idea while still in a familiar setting. Good luck, Steph!