Myrtle Beach

We’re on the way to visit my in-laws at Myrtle Beach today.   They have a time share there they’ve  been going to for many years.   They’ve asked us to join them in the past and my children have good memories of the time we spent with them there.

I have specific memories of the last time we went, which was two years ago, mostly because it was right after my daughter lost her vision.   But let me digress for a minute and talk about my travel packing lists…

This might sound like way too much organization but I need to compartmentalize things so I don’t have so much floating around in my head.   I think I thought for years that I had a bad memory for certain things, and perhaps I do, but I think now after working with our play therapist that it’s a way of reducing clutter in my mind.    I write things down so I don’t have to keep them in my mind—and because I know it’s documented somewhere I don’t have to worry about it.

My son was having anxiety—a larger and more complex situation—Dhruti had said and because he had so much going on in his mind he didn’t know how to organize it and that was giving him stress, something a five-year-old shouldn’t have.  She said if we helped him by writing things down like dates on a calendar, he would know he could find the information when he needed to and it would be one less thing on his mind.   And it worked.   That, among other things helped my son a lot.

Back to the travel packing lists though, this is something I’ve done for years.   It’s a list of all the things we need to bring on any given trip as well as things we need to do beforehand like run the dishwasher, find someone to get the mail and put the bread in the refrigerator.   There are other things on the list that we might forget, like bringing bathing suits, which we’ve forgotten before.   It includes things specific to the trip based on the location we’re traveling to such as bedding when we go to New Jersey to visit my brother– and sister–in-law.  

When we go on a new trip I take create a new travel packing list, copying the list from the last trip or more commonly by copying the list from the last trip to that location.  I have a folder of all the lists for all our trips from the last several years.   It’s interesting to look back and see how much we had to take for trips when my children we younger and needed things like a crib, pacifiers, bottles, diapers, etc.   These days the list is a lot shorter.   Soon enough the children will be responsible for completely packing themselves—which will be nice.

Back on topic to the trip to Myrtle Beach for this weekend though, it’s been two years since we last went.   Two years ago was only months after my daughter had had an infection in her eyes, causing catastrophic damage she would never recover from.   We didn’t know what she could see and she had been in surgery every two weeks to monitor and manage her detached retinas.   We didn’t know how to handle a blind child and we were all depressed at the unknown future of her vision.

I remember some things specifically from the trip.   One was of going up in a large ferris wheel.   I was hoping my daughter would be able to see something, anything, as we got up high.   I was so sad to realize she couldn’t even tell which direction the ocean was and that large building rooftops were not discernible to her.  

I also remember one thing that still makes me smile.   We were walking down the boardwalk and a lady had an inflated green monkey.   She asked if my daughter would like it because she had won it and wanted to share it with someone who would like to have it.    My daughter did want the monkey.   It squeaked when she squeezed it and she played with it all weekend.

We still have that monkey.   It lived in the children’s bedroom for a long, long time but eventually was relegated to the storage room beyond their closet.    We pulled it out a few times and he was played with again (he never got named).   Then he got a hole.   The deflated monkey got put in a box of toys because I couldn’t bear to throw it away.   Just two days ago my daughter found the green monkey and I tried to re inflate it, only to find out the hole was significant.   I didn’t have time to find and patch the hole so I put it away for later.

Maybe this trip we’ll get another green monkey.

The Big Boy Update:  My daughter wants to play with my son in the car right now.   He isn’t interested.   She has been persistent but it’s not working as my son just said to her, “I’ve had enough of you.”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  I took my daughter rock climbing the other day for the first time.   She was hesitant at first but once she got the hang of it she was quite good.   There were challenges mostly because she couldn’t see where the handholds were but she didn’t give up.   By the time we’d been there for an hour she had decided she liked it, saying, “I love to climb.   This is even better than a water slide.”