Don't Get Around Much Anymore
Back in our pre-baby days, Kathy and I were always taking trips. Day trips, weekend trips, plane trips, long road trips, we pretty much did it all. People would refer to us as the "trip couple" (and Kathy as "Kokomo Kathy"). Traveling was, like, our couple super-power. When people saw us, they would always ask us what our next trip was, and they knew that we would always have an answer lined up.
That all came to a screeching halt about seven months ago with the new additions to our family. In the past seven months, we have stayed entirely within a 45-minute radius of our house. For the first few months, we pretty much only got into the car if we needed to go to the doctor's office or the grocery store. Nowadays if we're feeling particularly adventurous we'll brave crossing the Bay to visit some friends in Alameda, but when we go much beyond that, we start to get kinda nervous and itchy.
For some reason, even though Leah and Riley are pretty well-behaved in general, Kathy and I can't shake this uneasy feeling that if we breach the borders of our protective San Francisco bubble, something's going to go horribly wrong and the babies will start screaming their heads off, and we won't be able to stop it because the only thing that will magically calm them down will be something that we left sitting in their toy box at home. And so they'll keep crying louder and louder and louder until their heads eventually explode. And we will stare at the smoking remains of our children, and we will think to ourselves wistfully, if only we had stayed at home -- our babies would still have their heads.
We're trying to get out a little more, just so the babies become aware that there's a great big world out there. This weekend, we went to the zoo. It was nice to get out, but truthfully, the babies didn't really give a damn about the animals. They are way more interested in Sophie the rubber giraffe than they are in a real, live 30-foot tall giraffe walking around right in front of them. For one thing, Sophie's a heckuva lot more squeaky. And then after an hour, they both melted down, which wasn't unbearable, but still, it wasn't the most fun thing in the world to be running around with a screaming 20-pound baby strapped to you on the hottest day of the year as you try to find where the heck that darn zoo exit was.
That all came to a screeching halt about seven months ago with the new additions to our family. In the past seven months, we have stayed entirely within a 45-minute radius of our house. For the first few months, we pretty much only got into the car if we needed to go to the doctor's office or the grocery store. Nowadays if we're feeling particularly adventurous we'll brave crossing the Bay to visit some friends in Alameda, but when we go much beyond that, we start to get kinda nervous and itchy.
For some reason, even though Leah and Riley are pretty well-behaved in general, Kathy and I can't shake this uneasy feeling that if we breach the borders of our protective San Francisco bubble, something's going to go horribly wrong and the babies will start screaming their heads off, and we won't be able to stop it because the only thing that will magically calm them down will be something that we left sitting in their toy box at home. And so they'll keep crying louder and louder and louder until their heads eventually explode. And we will stare at the smoking remains of our children, and we will think to ourselves wistfully, if only we had stayed at home -- our babies would still have their heads.
We're trying to get out a little more, just so the babies become aware that there's a great big world out there. This weekend, we went to the zoo. It was nice to get out, but truthfully, the babies didn't really give a damn about the animals. They are way more interested in Sophie the rubber giraffe than they are in a real, live 30-foot tall giraffe walking around right in front of them. For one thing, Sophie's a heckuva lot more squeaky. And then after an hour, they both melted down, which wasn't unbearable, but still, it wasn't the most fun thing in the world to be running around with a screaming 20-pound baby strapped to you on the hottest day of the year as you try to find where the heck that darn zoo exit was.
Anyway, this weekend, my college roommate is getting married in Hawaii. Kathy and I briefly flirted with the idea of a Hawaii trip with the whole family, but we eventually got freaked about by the complicated logistics and chickened out. So now it's just me going to Hawaii this weekend, while Kathy and my parents spend the weekend in San Francisco with the babies.
I guess Kathy and I continue to be imprisoned by our own fear. People I've talked to about this think we're being silly, I can tell. But most of those people don't have twins. Let me tell you, the image of two babies sitting in our laps crying their lungs out for six hours straight is a pretty big deterrent. I mean, all you parents of single babies out there, picture the volume of your own baby screaming as loud as he/she possibly can. Now multiply that by two. That's loud. Is it worth going through that just to spend a weekend making sure your babies stay out of the sun and don't ingest too much of that Waikiki sand? No, we didn't think so either.
But the good news is Dave gets to go to Hawaii! Sorry, Leah and Riley! (And more importantly, sorry, Kathy!)
posted by Dave @ 7:39 PM
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