I’m not going to say it was every easy to travel with Niko, but it certainly was never as hard as as it is now. When I think about it from his point of view, I understand why it is frustrating. He is mobile and has nine months of living without mobility to make up. He also doesn’t understand English, so he can’t even come close to understanding why, in god’s name, we would force him to sit in one place for six hours. We are in what I like to call the “travel mobility-video gap,” as illustrated in the graph below.
The problem is there is a gap between Niko gaining mobility and us being able to distract him with videos. I can get him to watch a six minute Pixar short on my iPhone, but that doesn’t go very far on long flights. Especially when United adds three hours of delay to that trip. All of this is just to say, we flew to Kauai on Saturday, with our crazy, energetic, willful son. The hell if I’m going to let him dictate when or where we travel, so Niko locked in battle in a war between father and son. Sadly, it is one of those wars where nobody wins — everybody just ends up exhausted. I remember when I used to think traveling was hard. Long flights, cramped seats, inevitable delays. What a fool I was then.
Jul found us a gem of a house on the east coast of Kauai. It has a good 100 yards of beach front, giving us our own beach — we rarely see another person. There is a beautiful sunrise in the morning, and it backs up against a really fantastic mountain range.
The living room and kitchen together are a huge expanse of Berber carpet, meaning Niko has pretty much free run of the place. Much better than a 747. He isn’t walking yet, only standing, but I feel like he might take his first step while we are here.
Mark, Mand, and LC arrived a couple hours after us. Not much to report beyond a bunch of swimming, surfing, and digging in the sand. Niko loves the water (as if he had a choice) and is a huge fan of mangoes. But then again mangoes are candy dressed up as fruit, so this isn’t surprising.
Mark and Mand do a much better job with photos. More on LC’s blog and their flickr stream.
7 Responses to “Cu-why-ee”
Once again wishing I’d figured out a way to weasel *my* name onto that adoption certificate! Eat some mangos for me Niko ;0)
So jealous! Go to Pizzetta’s – great place to *try* to dine with mobile infant/toddler people. Antonio keeps putting Kauai on the top of our travel list. Am I wrong to suggest we go to new places each time? Your pictures are making me rethink that one! Aloha!
Part of me agrees with you. There are too many places to go in this world to go back to the same place twice. At the same time, if you find paradise, why go anywhere else?
Enjoy! The travel part will only become worse before it settles out. I remember a memorable journey when my best friend moved from Honolulu back to the Washington, D.C. area with her young family and a husband who was recovering from gall bladder surgery, so I went along to help. The infant was fine, but the 2 1/2 year old had an ear infection and screamed all the way from Honolulu to Los Angeles. Fortunately, the medicine had kicked in on the transcontinental half of the journey.
Scott,
Nicholas deserves a medal for being flown and driven over all of the country in less than 12 short months.
Enough said.
Ok – I need to know what kind of camera you have… your pictures are always amazing!
I am also newly concerned about my idea of going to Costa Rica with R. I just got his passport and all. Do you know when the videos start to work? Maybe I should wait…
[…] is definitely getting easier (we have definitely moved forward in the travel mobility-video gap). Niko will watch Finding Nemo pretty much indefinitely so at this point our sanity is defined by […]