Creative Kimpire: Our First Family Vacation: Ocean City, MD

Our very first family vacation is in the books. We went to Ocean City, MD last week. While this was our first trip with kids, Philip and I have been there many times. Well, there, and in the vicinity. When we were younger and poorer, we used to camp on the beach at Assateague Island, which is 12 miles south of Ocean City. There are wild horses that roam the island (and shit on the beach. And knock tents down accidentally 🤦🏻‍♀️), and they’re pretty cool to see. We visited the island this time, too, and it was one of the highlights of our trip.

One time, back in the days of printed MapQuest directions, we got lost on the way home from an Assateague trip. Our only saving grace was the paper map we had in the car. I found us a way back to our route while Philip drove. We didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary about where we ended up, but on the way out of town we saw a billboard that said, “Feel Safe? You just left a high crime area.” 😳😳😳🫣. I’ll never forget that. I wish I knew where we were when I saw it so that we can never go there again 😂. I feel like I’ve told this story before. I’ve been writing this blog for a long time 😬.

I was pretty anxious about the car ride with the boys, but like anything, if you set the bar of expectations low enough, you’re sure to either be prepared or pleasantly surprised 😂. Philip and I got up at 4:45am and we were on the road by 6am. We tried carefully getting the boys out of bed, hoping they would go right back to sleep in their car seats, but of course Quinn woke up with vigor once he realized what we were doing. He did end up napping for a little bit though. Ash slept for the majority of the first two hours. Most long rides lull him to sleep. I had gotten them some new toys that they hadn’t seen beforehand, to help keep them entertained, and Philip loaded our iPad with some of their favorite shows. I ended up in the backseat when Ash became fussy, so that I could help with the iPad and a snack. This turned out to be a terrible idea though, because it made him car sick and he puked all over himself and me 🤦🏻‍♀️. It smelled straight like dog food, which didn’t surprise me because he eats dog food every chance he gets 🤮. I cleaned him up the best I could while on the road, and then we stopped at a McDonald’s soon after for breakfast and to get him changed. Quinn also watched the iPad, but gave it back shortly after, saying his belly was hurting. They both got a dose of Dramamine, and the rest of the ride was uneventful, thank goodness.

He had a big tantrum at McDonald’s, throwing himself on the floor and crying. I tried picking him up and he wasn’t having it. A lady walked by him and gave me a look and I was like 🤷🏻‍♀️. He calmed down eventually.

Our friend, Michelle, and her son, Joaquin, drove down from MA and spent the week with us in a condo. It’s a cool coincidence that one of our favorite vacation spots is almost exactly the same distance away for both of us. Our 7 hour drive took us 9, however, which we expected. We timed it pretty good though, and arrived only about 30 minutes after them. We hadn’t seen them since this time last year, when they made the trip all of the way to us. Ash was only 5 months old then, so this visit with him was quite a bit different 😅. I think the first time I said, “Asher! Stop sticking your hand in the toilet!,” happened about 30 minutes after we arrived, and then again at least twice a day, every day that we were there 🙄🤢. Once even happened right after his brother had just peed in it. Kids are so gross.

We told Quinn our room had bunk beds in it when we were driving to the condo and he said, “I assume it has a ladder” 😂. He was right.

Quinn had been anticipating seeing the beach for weeks before our trip, and the smile on his face when he saw it was huge. However, it faded a whole lot when it was time to actually touch the ocean water. He completely refused the first day, but he was brave the second day and dipped a toe. That was enough for him, and he never touched it again 😅🤦🏻‍♀️. He fell in love with the condo pool instead, and that’s where we spent a good portion of our time.

All smiles 😃😃. Peep the shorts 👀. It was a fight to get him to wear them. Whenever we weren’t going in the sand, he wore his jeans 🙄. Whatever, kid, be hot. I don’t care.

He thought being buried in the sand was super funny 😁.

The pool was his favorite part. He was so excited that he could swim by himself and couldn’t wait to show Philip, who didn’t come to the pool the first day. Quinn told him, “Dad, when we go to the pool I wanna show you how I can swim by myself. It’s gonna be impressive!” 🤣

Ash enjoyed it, too 😊.

When Ash saw the ocean, he went forth confidently and without fear. So much so that I had to run to keep up with him because I wasn’t expecting it. That determination quickly turned to despair when the cold water hit his feet. He screamed while I laughed, and then picked him up to save him 😂. Poor kid. It was a great video though 😂😂.

😍

He was so mad 😆🫣.

He loved the sand though 🤮.

We made the drive down to Assateague on our second full day. We brought our net with us, and stopped at the island market to buy some frozen chicken necks (🤢) and string so that we could go crabbing. Philip and I had done it before, but it was new to Michelle, Joaquin, and our boys. Philip’s friend from work, Tony, who he had never met in real life since he works remotely, and his family, met up with us while we were there, and they got to go crabbing for the first time, too. Philip recommended OC to his friend and we planned our vacations at the same time, hoping they’d get to meet up, so it was cool that it worked out.

Horses on the side of the road.

They even walked in front of us and caused traffic to stop when we were driving to the pier to catch crabs.

This one got resourceful and used that pole to scratch its belly 😆.

So pretty ❤️.

Crabbin 🦀

Ashy had to get strapped in for safety 😬. He was trying to run everywhere and I was afraid he was going to fall in the water.

Blue crab. They have to be at least 5” to eat. We don’t eat them anyway, we just throw them back.

We went to dinner with Tony that night at a pizza place. It was their pick, and they said it was the top rated pizza place, which was warranted for the food, but certainly not for the seating 😑. Going out to eat with Ash is so not fun, but it is especially not fun in a crowded dining room that doesn’t have high chairs to restrain him in 😆. He was restless and didn’t want to sit still. It was a bit of a shit show. I held out as long as I could, trying to give Philip time to talk to his friend, but we eventually had to leave. This stage of life is difficult with a baby toddler.

Look at how big those freakin pizza boxes were 😂. They make a 28” pizza!

The night before, we ate at Mother’s Cantina, a Mexican restaurant, with just our group. Ash was in a high chair for most of the meal, but when he got antsy, I put him beside me on the bench. He took my sunglasses off my head and was playing with them. A few seconds later, they were gone. He had tossed them over the top of the bench and smacked the man sitting behind us right in the forehead 😩🫣. I apologized, of course. I heard that man say to his group, “That was just her glasses? Those are the heaviest glasses I’ve ever seen!” Tell me about it, they slip off my face all of the time 🥴😂. He wasn’t angry about it, luckily.

The condo we stayed in is newly renovated and very nice. It is not, however, toddler-proof. I had to relocate decorations so that they didn’t get broken. I looked around at all of the uncovered outlets with apprehension. Thankfully, Ash didn’t notice them. He was too busy stealing anything he could get his hands on that belonged to other people. We were out one day, the four of us, when Michelle texted me to see if I knew where her hairbrush was 😂🫣. I imagine it’s easy to forget what living with a toddler is like when you only have a teenager. If I was them, I wouldn’t want him touching my stuff, given where his hands have been. When he wasn’t sticking them in the toilet, he was demonstrating his newest disgusting habit—sticking them in his diaper 🤢. I’m just waiting for him to pull out a hand covered in poop. He started doing it about a week before our vacation, so I was putting overalls on him to keep him out of it. Unfortunately, he figured out how to maneuver around to the inside of those, so my next step is back to onesies if the problem persists 🤦🏻‍♀️. **UPDATE: Since the start of this writing, it has happened twice. TWICE 🤬🤬🫣😭😭💩

He even sleeps like that 🤦🏻‍♀️🙄😩.

🤦🏻‍♀️

It’s hard finding activities to do together when our kids have such a large age gap—13, 4, and 1. Philip and I took our kids to Northside Park, a local playground that had lots of cool equipment for them to climb on. For the first two days of our stay, Quinn and Ash were damn near perfect angels, but by the end, they had suppressed their crank for as long they could. Ash, in particular, was being a huge grump ass. Northside Park offered kayak rentals and had a fairly large lake to paddle around in, but there was no way we could’ve done it that day. Ash was having a tantrum more often than he wasn’t, and we didn’t want to risk putting him in the water in that mood. He is never far from my sight, and even checks to make sure I’m still around when he can’t see me by saying, “Mama,” every 4-6 minutes; but that day, he was a stage seventeen clinger. That behavior is less exhausting on vacation, because I have less I’m trying to get done, but it’s still very draining.

Ash was so not into getting his pic taken 😑.

This thing was super cool because it spun, but when any kid saw a parent pushing it, they all wanted on 😆.

Ash napped once we made it back to the condo, so he was in a better mood for the evening. We went to the Boardwalk right at sunset, which is a crazy busy time to be there. Quinn surprised us and rode a ride with Philip at the amusement park there. After the fit he threw at Tyler County Fair, we didn’t expect him to actually like the rides, so we didn’t pay for a wristband and just bought the tokens needed to ride one ride. It was ridiculously expensive for the two of them—$25! 😳. He’s lucky he didn’t change his mind, because he was riding it whether he wanted to or not at that price 😂🤪. He said he liked it, but again, at that price, he didn’t get to ride more.

While Quinn’s highlight of the trip was the condo pool, Ash’s resided at the boardwalk. I wish I would have videoed the moment he saw the gigantic Hulk sculpture made from car parts. Philip had put him on his shoulders to see it because there was a crowd gathered in front of it to watch a pop-up magic show. I knew the moment he spotted it because Ash’s legs started kicking and I could just barely hear him saying, “HULK!! HULK!!,” in his gravelly baby voice 😂.

“HULK!!”

Hulk’s was a little bit bigger 😆.

❤️

😮

🛞

Further down the boardwalk we found Dinosaur Park, which is just a bunch of bone sculptures stuck in the sand for kids to climb on. They had fun exploring it.

Cheesin’

🩵🩵🩵

🦕 🦖 🦴

On our last day, Philip and I took the boys to an indoor inflatable play place called Coco’s Funhouse. They had a great time, and Philip and I enjoyed it, too. I desperately needed to do something fun with my kids. I wasn’t enjoying my time with them until recently, but thanks to adjusting the dosage of my depression medicine, and taking this time away, I was able to reconnect with them.

So. Much. Fun.

Ahhhhh

🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️

This was an interactive game projected onto the floor where they had to stomp the objects. The game changed every few minutes. Think of a cat chasing a laser and you’ll have a good idea of what it was like 😂.

Blurry cuz he was hyped 😆.

This one was cool, too. He painted the frog by touching different parts of it. It was a great way to wear them out.

They had a toddler area that was just for little littles, but the day and time we went was reserved for children 4 and under anyway.

Ash loves doing anything dangerous 🙄🤦🏻‍♀️. He actually fell off of this shortly after I took this pic and had a nice mark by his eye from rug burning his face 😩.

We were scheduled to checkout on Friday morning at 10am, but decided to leave at 6pm on Thursday evening instead, hoping the boys would sleep after the first few hours. That went according to plan, for the most part, but Ash is used to nursing to sleep. I had hoped being in the car would be enough to put him out, but there was no such luck. He kept saying, “Mama, night night,” in the saddest little baby voice you’ve ever heard, and crying. I couldn’t take it. If you’ve never nursed a child in a moving vehicle while they’re strapped into a car seat, consider yourself lucky 😂.

Quinn must have been having an angry dream because he was actually asleep in this pic 😂.

I don’t recommend leaving the beach at peak fun time. It will give you serious FOMO. The forecast for rain got it wrong and the weather was beautiful. The boardwalk comes alive at nighttime, and there’s so much to do. Couple that with an even bigger challenge of leaving one of your best friends, who you only get to see once a year, if you’re lucky, and it’s a recipe for tears. I cried for the whole first hour of the drive home, I think. It was like once I turned it on, I couldn’t turn it off. To make matters worse, the day we left was the same day my oldest niece moved into her dorm and my SIL was texting me, telling me how hard it was to leave her. I was like, “I’m already an emotional mess, you’re killin me 😭😭.”

There are many moments in life when time feels like it goes the slowest, and traveling to and from vacation are definitely one. I really shouldn’t complain because Philip did all of the driving, but that was necessary given his inability to nurse the baby 😂. It’s really unfortunate he can’t, I’d gladly transfer that task to him. I tried working toward the goal of weaning Ash before we left by introducing a new bink to him. I know it seems counter productive to try to get him hooked on one at a time when you would typically be breaking him of it, but I need to do something! I’m so tired of breastfeeding it’s not funny. Ash seemed to like the bink at first, but it wasn’t hacking it as a Mama replacement in the car. If I even tried to give it to him, he would just chuck it forcefully away 😔. Ugh.

Giving me false hope 😅

On the bright side, no one puked on the way home, and the only deer 🦌 we encountered were in our own neighborhood 😂🤦🏻‍♀️. On the not so bright side, we came home with 5 new stuffed animals 🤦🏻‍♀️, and a cold for Philip that he still hasn’t completely kicked. He was coughing so much he couldn’t sleep. He’s negative for Covid, thankfully. I think the boys and I had a touch of it while on vacation as well, which would explain their sudden shift in behavior. Aside from, ya know, being 4 and 1 and moody as hell 🙄🤪. Philip always seems to get whatever we have but then be like 10x sicker than the rest of us. I told him it’s because of his basement dwelling tendencies—his isolation from human kind these past almost 5 years working remotely has caused his immune system to weaken.

These guys hang around all of the time.

Having them cross your path isn’t nearly as cool as when a wild horse does it 😆

He/she is kinda pretty though.

This picture does not properly show the ridiculousness of our stuffed animal population 🤦🏻‍♀️. I loved them, too, as a kid, so I have a hard time saying no.

We haven’t even been home for a whole week yet but it feels like we’ve been super busy. Quinn and I got to watch my oldest nephew, Coen, play in his second soccer game of the season last weekend. He’s a senior this year and made captain. Woo hoo 😃. Ash got to stay home with Philip for that one because baby chasing doesn’t mesh well with soccer watching. Quinn wanted the training wheels taken off of his bike before we left for the beach, but then refused to try riding it. Once we were back, he randomly got the courage to try it, and he was riding like a pro in no time! He’s been zooming up and down the driveway ever since. He was really excited to show all of his friends when they came down to our house the other day to play in the sensory table I threw together for them. He couldn’t wait to show the girls next door later that evening, too. The oldest one had a birthday party, and he insisted I take him over for it, even though he’s been over there a million times without me 🙄. He’s been very attached to me again lately, so it’s probably good timing that he’ll be starting school in 2 weeks. We went to the orientation for his class yesterday evening. He was super shy at first, not wanting to talk to the teachers, but he warmed up after a while. He said he liked it there and didn’t want to leave when it was time to go. I have a feeling the first day without us there will be a challenge though. I’m thankful that one of his friends will be going at the same time as him, and hopefully that will make the transition easier.

Coen heading the ball, working on concussion #3 🤪

No training wheels! 👏🏻

Our dino/baking soda/sand/vinegar sensory table 🤩.

This was the best I could get at his school orientation 😛.

I don’t recall having any sort of planned talk with Quinn about not talking to strangers, but I don’t need to worry about it because he has that lesson down pat. Sometimes I almost feel guilty about him being rude when someone is trying to be friendly with him and he won’t engage. However, there are plenty of times where I want to give the adult a lecture instead. We were in a store two times recently where strangers overstepped his boundaries. The first was when a man walked by him and tasseled his hair to say hello. I know he didn’t mean anything by it, but like, seriously, keep your hands to yourself. Don’t touch people without consent. It’s not hard. That’s literally one of the rules on Quinn’s classroom sheet. There are some adults that need a refresher course, I guess. The second person, a woman, was trying to be helpful and asked if he wanted her to open the drink I was buying for him, while reaching toward him for it. Thanks, but no thanks. She didn’t bother to ask me if I wanted him to have an open container in a store (I didn’t). Not to mention, if the pandemic should’ve taught us anything, it’s that we don’t need to be spreading our germs where children put their mouths. I’m sure that bottle he was about to drink out of had enough exposure without some direct liability before touching his lips 🙄. Maybe I’m the only weirdo who worries about such things but given the amount of times my children were sick last year, you can’t fault me for trying to minimize their risks. They do enough gross shit that makes them vulnerable, they don’t need any help 😂. Alright, I’ll get off my soapbox now 😝.

We made it back in time to go to Town and Country Days, but we decided not to. We only go for the animals and the food anyway, since it’s hit or miss with whether or not Quinn would ride anything, so it’s not worth the money. Instead, Philip made us some funnel cakes at home.

Powdered sugar and cinnamon sugar.

Ash was not a fan and he made a big mess sampling them 😆🤦🏻‍♀️.

We had lots of rain while we were gone and the garden went crazy 😬. I picked a pepper when we got back, and it was the size of 1/4 of Ash’s body 😂.

My sunflowers bloomed, too 😃😃😃

There was a grasshopper on it today

We also have watermelons 🍉 that weren’t there when we left! I’m not picking them until the plants die because I always do it too early and they’re not ripe 🤦🏻‍♀️.

PUPdate 🐾:

Sophie stayed home while we were gone and Lori and Haleigh teamed up to let her out each day.

In true Sophie fashion, they said she was super stubborn and would only go to pee if they took her out on a leash, while she normally just goes out herself to the backyard 🙄.

I ordered that planter and I love it 😂. I find it very amusing to sit things beside her that look like her 🤪.