Our first 'holiday' (aka boot camp) with two children

Our first 'holiday' (aka boot camp) with two children

Warning: this post contains sarcasm.

Holiday. That word conjures up all sorts of connotations: sun, sea, sand, rest.... the list goes on. And then you go on holiday with children and that brings on a whole new meaning of holidaying: Fitting flight times into daily schedules, dealing with the possibility that your child could vomit or poo mid transit, carting around oodles of stuff; stuff you don't really want to take up luggage space with. On this holiday we took a whole bag dedicated to weaning – weaning, for gods sake. For the past few weeks I've had people tell me I'm crazy for going abroad with a four year old and a six month old but people do this all the time, right? If you say you're not going abroad until your children are grown up people look at you as though you're equally mad. 

The fact is, if we didn't go abroad now we never would. When are you ever really ready to accept a holiday with no real opportunity to lay horizontal on a beach all afternoon? A holiday where you swap cultured cuisine for the ease of a pizza takeaway you know your kids will eat? A holiday with no opportunity for romantic nights out or strolls down the beach? Nope, I'm still really not selling holidaying with kids, am I? 

But we really needed a break. And by a break, I guess what I meant was a change (with sunshine). Sunshine helps me cope with anything. I figured that, despite the chaos, the sunshine would help to put a smile on our faces, and the excitement in our children's eyes when they saw the play park or swimming pool would make the trip well worth it.

The journey

The problem with organising a holiday is that there are several people involved who need organising too. Unfortunately that part is down to me, due to the fact I am ridiculously neurotic a planner. My husband thinks I am over the top; he rolls his eyes at me when I get stressed over packing, when I double check paperwork, and stress over flight times.... Ah, yes, flight times. My husband thinks I need to chill out about that too and decided that we only needed to arrive to the check in half an hour before the gate closed. He didn't think it would be busy at 6am; we had already done online check in and we were traveling out of season so queues were unlikely – besides which, the thought of getting up earlier than 4am with two small children was not welcomed. I, on the other hand, insisted we needed to leave at 4am latest, always better to be earlier, right? 

I'm not sure what happened to my brain the day before we left but after two days of solid packing and a total of six hours sleep my brain turned to jelly. When my husband reminded me of the get-up time I just set my alarm accordingly, like a lamb being led to the slaughter. Sure, 4:45am, yep, that's what time we are leaving.... is that right? Urmmmm.... Zzzzzzzzz

The realisation of my error was made plain when a wrong turn was taken on a route that we have travelled over a hundred times. I looked at my watch and realised that I'd succumbed once again by Mr laid back's persuasions. "Oh, no, we're going to miss the flight!" I said in a state of panic

"Chill out!" Mr laid back snapped.

Mrs Neurotic kept her mouth shut when she heard a little voice say 'I need a wee wee.' after we'd gone past all the services and had to stop by the side of the dual carriageway for my four year old to pee (most of which went down his trousers). Mrs Neurotic kept her mouth shut when the half an hour before gate closing turned into twenty five minutes before and still with no airport in site, still with a parking space to find. Mrs Neurotic (that's me by the way, in case you thought we'd invited a suspiciously named nanny) kept her mouth shut when a parking space was unavailable. Mrs Neurotic didn't keep her mouth closed when, having managed to abandon the car in some lame excuse of a parking space, and on running to the airport carrying a small child, she nearly tripped over her wheely suitcase and then watched as the flight tickets and passports blew across the road. Mrs neurotic nearly passed out when, on entering the airport with fifteen minutes until the gate closed, the queues were the size of those queuing for the Olympic Games.

I looked behind and saw my husband gesticulate anger with his arms in the air (like when he loses a football match), and I kicked myself that I didn't just listen to my own instincts. Never again will I trust the man I married (just ignore the last, soppy blog post I wrote about him, yeh?). The proceeding ten minutes involved a nice lady from Jet2 ushering us to the front (telling us we'd have to "run like crazy"), dropping off suitcases, presenting crumpled up bits of paper in the hope they could fathom out which were our tickets, and my husband telling us to run like crazy whilst he checked in the oversize baggage.

Now, have you ever tried running whilst carrying a small child and two heavy rucksacks? Have you ever tried that and then added another child into the mix who insists on carrying a ridiculously large teddy bear? On reaching security another large queue loomed and I looked at the time: 6:30am, the time the gate closed. We had surely missed the flight and I felt overwhelmed with stress as I had to look into the eyes of my excitable four year old and tell him that we might not be able to catch the plane. "But why, mummy? He asked, clutching his bear tightly. 

Suddenly my husband appeared with a fast-track pass and we ran through the queues. I was told that because I had baby food I had to go through security gate number two (the one which had the biggest bloomin' queue), while the boys ran on ahead. My bag kept beeping with all the things I'd forgotten to take out, amongst which was my son's favourite Monsters inc. drinks bottle full of water. Confiscated. I could have cried. I know what you're thinking, couldn't you just drink it, but I was in so much of a daze that they could have told me to put my socks on my ears for security purposes and I'd probably have obliged.

Then I ran. I ran like I've never ran before, bashing into innocent holidaymakers and wheely suitcases as I pegged it through duty free. Not even Givenchy could hold me back now. I could feel my heart in my chest and I was convinced the plane would have gone. I ran round the corner to see three sorry looking boys waiting for me, whose faces then beamed when they saw me. Made it. Just.

When we got on the plane I didn't know whether to laugh or to cry, I don't think I've ever been so stressed in my whole entire life. We sat on the flight and I had to explain to my four year old that I had to give the security man his drinks bottle. He burst into tears. I refrained from doing so.

The rest of the journey involved trying to stop my four year old from relentlessly kicking the chair of the poor sod in front, continually picking up his dropped crayons off the floor, and trying to find ways of getting our six month old baby off to sleep. We eventually managed this by my husband smuggling him in his jacket, only to be told by our four year old, on the inside seat, that he needed another wee.

When all eventually calmed down my husband flicked through the flight magazine, sighed contently and said. "Whenever I'm on a plane it makes me feel like I need to travel more." 

I refrained from punching him.*

The holiday 

On arriving in France my four year old adopted a split personality of a knackered, over-excitable yet grizzly bear, which was perfectly understandable considering his ordeal but it didn't exactly make life easy. We crammed our luggage into the budget hire car which left me with pins and needles from having a suitcase shoved by my feet. Every time my husband pressed on the breaks the buggy crashed into the back seat, whacking a poor unsuspecting child on the head (we stopped to secure it, like any parent sick of whining respectable parent concerned with health and safety would).

We should have known that once arriving at the glorious Eurocamp, we should have left our beautiful, exhausted children to sleep in the sweaty car but we wanted to a) cool them down and b) share with them the excitement of not one but three amazing water slides (quite frankly, the pool was awesome). My four year old was in too much of a daze to even notice and we decided that, after a luggage drop off and a nosy around the campsite, a supermarket shop was in order to replenish energies. This seemed like a perfectly good idea until, on getting into the car, my four year old lost all coordination and grazed his leg. No big deal, right? Just give him a lolly in the car and he'll soon calm down.

Twenty minutes later he was still screaming. Not crying, screaming. We tried his favourite songs, a lolly, a joke, some games.... bribery – nothing worked. Have you ever driven a car in the sweltering heat when you're knackered with the soundtrack of a screaming child? Well, it does funny things to you, like makes you stop the car by the side of the road and get out to have a breather, which we both did. I don't have a picture of this but if you can imagine my husband and I sat on a wall (still not overly communicative with one another after the flight) and a screaming, angry child in the car who is literally bashing at the windows. At this point you're probably thinking we are horrendous parents, but in all honesty we needed to just take a breather in order to protect our little ones from obscenities. You know that you just need some time out to recuperate. You know that all your child needs is a snack and a nap but he's not having any of it, he just wants to be mad. Miraculously our six month old slept through the whole ordeal.

We eventually managed to force ourselves back into the car and drive to the supermarket. My husband took our four year old into the supermarket in the hope of distracting him with croissants, and I stayed in the car while our baby napped. The problem here was that there was no shade in the carpark whatsoever and my husband had taken the keys with him. After an hour of sweating and sitting under a carpark tree to try and cool down my six month old (who had now awoken) - yes, you heard me correctly, one hour, my husband returned with a trolley load of shopping. On the plus note, my four year old seemed remarkably chirpy and said "my knee is better now mummy, are we going home now?"

Part of me wondered whether that would actually be a good idea.

waiting in a french supermarket carpark in the heat of the midday sun

Foolishly, we had all sorts of expectations about going on holiday in the weeks beforehand. We had visions of sitting on the decking, drinking french wine into the night once the children had gone to bed. They did not go to bed – at least, not till past nine o'clock, by which point we were absolutely knackered. My four year old was far too excited to go to bed and kept creeping out of his room every twenty minutes. My six month old kept waking himself up in-between because he decided that now was the time to discover rolling onto his tummy and getting stuck like a beached whale in the travel cot.

Once we finally got to bed, the mattress in our mobile home literally had springs sticking into our backs, meaning that when we did actually have the opportunity to sleep we couldn't. In the mornings, after the five thirty wake-up call every morning, we looked so worn down it was like a scene from the Walking Dead. On the first morning of the holiday we were greeted with an explosive poo from our youngest, meaning I had to put the hand travel wash to the test and then bath him in the kitchen sink. Still, at least we have a classic 'baby in the sink' photo to show his life-partner when he's older.

The boys at 5:30am, trying to keep them quiet enough not to wake the whole campsite

bath in a sink

Now, normally, how things work in relationships is that if one of you is having a tough time, the other will feel slightly stronger to offer support. Normally when you're at your lowest ebb, there is someone to pick you up just when you need it. Nope. Not this time. How about when all four of you are at your weakest? Who you gonna call? Ain't no ghost busters that can beat these ghoolies, let me tell you. My normally smiley six month old decided to use the holiday as an opportunity to whine like never before. Maybe it was the heat (although he was the same on cooler days), or maybe he was under the weather, or maybe (my personal favourite, standard explanation for any grizzliness) he was teething. Who knows, but he was not happy. My eldest was equally as grizzly, but then, if we will take a ginger-haired boy to the south of France, what did we expect, really?). My husband and I were so drained that when we did actually get the children off to sleep we sat on our phones playing candy crush, dribbling.

his general expression the whole week

We tried to ignore the fact that taking children on holiday is no walk in the park and we attempted to do things like 'chill' by the pool. Ha ha bloody ha. On the odd occasion that my six month old would fall asleep for twenty minutes (while my husband took our eldest down the slides) I would attempt to sunbathe amidst the squeals of children playing and accidentally splashing water on my face. Piss off you turds. God forbid that the boys would excitedly come back with ice creams before by allotted twenty minutes of peace was over – I'll stick your god-damn ice-cream down your blooming swimming shorts if you disturb my twenty minutes of peace again. I know, awful, what an ungrateful sod.

napping for twenty minutes by the pool

The great thing about Eurocamp, though, is that when you feel like you need a break you can leave your kids at the amazing clubs and activities. That would be lovely, of course, if your children were extroverts. I mean, couldn't they have a kids club where you could just sit them on their own to colour in instead of ultimate frisbee? How about maths - he loves maths. No, your children have to like sport and having close physical contact with complete and utter strangers. We begged him tried to encourage him to go but he was having none of it. Instead he was perfectly happy to be the closet extrovert he is around us when all we want is just one hour of peace. In order to keep him occupied we had to go out and about, which entailed stopping every two minutes for him to pick stones out of his god-damn sandals.

god-damn stones!!

But at least it was sunny, right? I can cope with most things if it's sunny. Except that then it started raining – like, torrential rain. And thunder. Please tell me what you do on holiday when it's raining and you're in the middle of rustic France? Thankfully we found some caves which were actually pretty amazing and perhaps the highlight of my week, if only for the fact that the darkness and sound of water actually lulled my youngest off to sleep in his sling. Happiest I saw him all week. In fact, it was the happiest I saw both of them, with my eldest behaving like a pleasant child instead of a manic, highly strung ogre. Now we're looking for package deals to caves for future holidays.

Another fail-safe option when it's raining is to just go out for food – and you can't go wrong eating out in France, right? All that lovely cheese and bread and ham. Wrong. Foolishly we decided to go out for tea one day as a treat, but the French do not do 'tea', do they? Romantic evening meals after 8pm? Yes. A bite to eat between the hours of five and seven? You're screwed. We spent an hour driving around the countryside, stopping at every little road-side restaurant to be greeted with numerous signs saying 'fermé'. Our four year old was losing the plot with hunger... and a hungry four year old is not to be reckoned with. After an hour of driving we ended up back at the campsite for a burger. Brits abroad at their best.

Funnily enough when the time came to depart for the flight home my husband wanted to leave ridiculously early. What are the chances? And so we had a very non-eventful wait at the airport, other than my four year old dropping his only snack all over the floor, causing me to promptly apply the three-second rule over a screaming child on a two hour flight. I chuckled to myself as we were placed in the 'parent and child' queue and I looked behind me at the row of maimed and withered parents, desperately offering snacks and toys with irritating jingles in order to distract their children from screaming, running riot or chucking stuff. 

And never have I been more pleased to see the grey clouds of England or to feel the comfort of my John Lewis mattress, let alone make myself a proper cup of tea (no offence, France, you may have blue skies but your tap water sucks). And just like that my children turned into little angels, with my six month old sleeping through the night (well, for three nights anyway) and my four year old using 'please' and 'thank-you's and telling me he loves me. There's no place like home.

No place that is, until I saw the mountain of washing I had to do...

And so I'm currently sat on my next holiday (it's taken a while to come to terms with the last) – a trip to Scotland with the grandparents. And we're totally missing the heatwave that you're all enjoying, and I wouldn't swap it for the world because last night I got to go on an actual date with my husband after having taken a nap that lasted the entire afternoon. We're currently trying to find ways of sneakily booking holidays ten minutes away from the grandparents on all future vacations - "no way, guess what, we're in the apartment next door!" They'd never twig, right?

Holidays with children are character building. I remember the first holiday with just one and it was like an initiation into parenting; a realisation that holidays would never be the same again. But it did get easier, and we've had some brilliant holidays – in the sun, even. And then we had number two and the initiation started all over again. But although I hope that holidays will once again be more restful (dear god, please), dare I say I will continue to book holidays and attempt the chaos – after all, they are the memories that we'll look back on and laugh at when time has washed away all the frustration and exhaustion and all we're left with are the stories that make us who we are. 

Where you going on holiday next year then, Grannie? I'd recommend a cave holiday.

*we are now on speaking terms, although he is officially banned from using the phrase 'chill-out.' in all instances of organisation.

And here are the photos I will be posting on Facebook, which make us look like we're an idyllic family on the perfect family holiday...

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