In my experience it is even more than lowering expectations, it is changing the mindset (or would you say “narrative”?). For me, vacation before kids meant relaxing, cultural visits, lot of walking, chilling out on terraces and going to nice restaurants. Most of this is not possible with young kids. So even if we do go on holidays with the kids, I do not consider that as “vacation”. It is family time or even an educational experience as we confront them with a different environment. Thinking about it this way helps dealing with broken expectations (even when that one was limited to enjoying some quiet time as they nap… and they don’t!) I assume it will get better with time as kids grow older and we can do more of the things that I like with them.

The one time we didn’t stay at the park, we headed to the lovely Grand Californian hotel lobby after lunch and found a place where the girls could curl up on the benches near the fire and they actually napped for over an hour (!). It was nice and dark and quiet over there, though that depends on how busy it is. Probably wouldn’t work on a Saturday.

I have to agree that traveling with little ones is not always “worth it”; however, we’ve still done vacations with them every year (sometimes multiple trips per year!) and it’s always fun overall, even if it is a bit of a disaster at times 🙂 I think what helped was that we kept things relatively simple and not too expensive (like renting a house at the beach with family, which provided an extra set of hands, or just doing a long weekend somewhere semi-local). Less cost made it less painful if things weren’t going great! I learned this the hard way after our last family vacation with just the four of us (our first!) that it’s extremely important to set expectations with your significant other or others traveling with you in terms of balancing who will wake up early with kids, how much alone time you want/need, etc. I was pretty fed up at the end of our vacation when I really hadn’t gotten the alone time I wanted to go running and to sleep in a few days, but I also hadn’t done a good job communicating what I wanted. Same goes for family members – don’t assume they will babysit unless you ask them/plan ahead!

We’re planning a week-long vacation to Disney in Dec with extended family, so need to take my own advice 🙂

Thanks for this, Laura! You’re right – it is a bit of an experiencing self vs. remembering self! And also probably a good reminder that memory making is not without some chaos costs here and there. And I totally commend your travel with so many little ones. I probably will avoid plane travel for at least the next year if we can, but your post encourages me to focus on creating some novel and unique experiences to try to stretch time even if it doesn’t mean getting on a plane. Glad to hear that it gets a little easier!
And PS – loved “Off the Clock”!

@Annelies- we may have to make those mugs! Glad you find us refreshing!

@Jenny- good question! And we will be doing another kids-and-travel episode before too long. I think this is actually a philosophical question — we can sometimes privilege the “remembering self” over the “experiencing self.” You are asking a lot of the experiencing self to get on a plane with 21-month-old twins. On the other hand, you may make a lot of memories. Things that are wonderful in retrospect aren’t always pleasant in the moment. I would say that once the kids can be reliably entertained by screens it does get easier. My 11-year-old, 9-year-old and 7-year-old are just fine to travel with (and we’ve taken them far away places such as Hawaii and Europe). The 4-year-old still gets antsy but I trust that by the time he is 6 or 7 that will be easier too. If you wanted to take a breather on travel until your kids are, say, 3.5, that would be understandable. People could come to see you. But if you have another kid that resets the clock…