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<\/a><\/p>\nYou might notice that 1 of the kids wasn’t even born yet.\u00a0 Little is missing from that picture.\u00a0 But driving that far with 3 kids was enough to convince me that I never, ever, ever wanted to do it with 4.\u00a0 Until last summer.<\/p>\n
Last summer I realized we had spent 13 years focused on raising a family in this town.\u00a0 The kids were going to school with the friends they were in playgroup with as infants.\u00a0 Big even had a teacher in middle school that used to change his diapers in the church nursery on Sunday afternoons.\u00a0 Middle has that teacher now. (It’s not awkward at all.\u00a0 Not.\u00a0 At.\u00a0 All.)\u00a0 We had raised them in a town where they ran into someone they knew almost everywhere they went.\u00a0 Even the youngest ones could direct another parent how to drive them home from school, sports, birthday parties, etc—-using landmarks even if they didn’t know the street names.\u00a0 They had traipsed over every inch of their town and surrounding areas from the hiking trails and parks to the libraries and the kids museums to every Goodwill and WalMart.<\/p>\n
But visits to their extended family up north were random and, even though my parents had taken them up in singles or pairs, my kids were often confused about who was related to who and how and what were 2nd and 3rd cousins anyway?\u00a0 No one knows the answer to that cousins thing but I figured that in 2014 they were finally old enough to make the trip together.\u00a0 And if it went well, we could visit every summer, gradually exposing them to the strange New England world where they made sweet tea with Nestea powder.\u00a0 Tea powder, people, powder.<\/p>\n
That was how I found myself sitting in the Baltimore harbor in August 2014.\u00a0 We spent the day touring the historic ships and submarines….<\/p>\n
paddling in the harbor….<\/p>\n climbing Federal Hill….<\/p>\n and rolling back down.\u00a0 Because no one should have to do those stairs twice.<\/p>\n We stopped for dinner at the Uno’s pizzeria.\u00a0 Not because it had anything to do with Baltimore but because my kids had never tasted Chicago-style deep dish pizza.\u00a0 We were sitting there, overlooking the Baltimore harbor, drowning in melted cheese and tomato sauce, while the kids asked questions about Chicago, where I had lived for 9 months during a college internship.<\/p>\n “Can we go to Chicago?” one of them asked.<\/p>\n That was when I tasted it.\u00a0 Amidst the cheese and the chewy crust, I thought I tasted change.\u00a0 We had survived a 5 hour trip.\u00a0 And an entire day of walking and touring and paddling.\u00a0 No one had cried or wet themselves or vomited or fallen down and refused to go any further.\u00a0 No one had missed their nap or lost their blankie or run out into traffic.<\/p>\n The next day we stopped to visit family in New Jersey, tried to figure out some of that second cousin stuff while (sort of) visiting great-grandma….<\/p>\n and then made our way to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty.<\/p>\n We stood on the top of the pedestal, looking at Manhattan, surrounded by an array of attire and variety of languages.<\/p>\n “Why are people here from other countries?”\u00a0 asked Little.\u00a0 I looked at him.<\/p>\n “Because they want to see America,”\u00a0 I said.\u00a0 “The Statue of Liberty is one of the most famous landmarks in America.”<\/p>\n “OK, he said.\u00a0 “Can we get ice cream at the food court when we get back down?”<\/p>\n I’m just going to assume this is how Italian kids feel about the Colosseum.\u00a0 Except the conversation involves gelato.<\/p>\n We ended up in Connecticut where we went to Hammonasset Beach on the Long Island Sound, stopping for lobster rolls along Route 1 (of course), and met the belugas at Mystic Aquarium….<\/p>\n while crashing at my uncle’s farm and sorting through more second and third cousins.<\/p>\n The road giddies eventually kicked in on the long ride home and I finally had to interrupt the laughter and craziness to ask, “Why is that game called ‘popsicle’?”\u00a0 Which sent all the kids into hysterics.<\/p>\n “Not ‘popsicle’!\u00a0 It’s ‘Chop Circle’!”\u00a0 Which made a little more sense.\u00a0 But still didn’t explain the appeal.\u00a0 Eh.<\/p>\n When the kids were finally asleep and there was nothing but the road stretching out in front of me, I knew it was time.\u00a0 13 years of roots was a long time and giving the kids a home was an important job.\u00a0 But now it was time to give them wings.\u00a0 I was already planning the next summer as we rolled along.\u00a0 But it got easier when my uncle set up a family reunion in 2015.<\/p>\n So we loaded up again in August this year and stopped for the night in Arlington, VA to check out the Pentagon, the National Cemetery, watch the Changing of the Guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier….<\/p>\n wander around the memorials, and wonder at how many times must the cannonball fly.<\/a><\/p>\n We walked over the bridge to D.C. to revisit the White House, Smithsonian museums, pandas at the National Zoo, and other places the kids might have been too young to remember from their first visit years ago….<\/p>\n We made our way to Boston where we visited the impressive Boston Tea Party Ships and Museum<\/a>, ate at Quincy Market, and toured the sites of the Freedom Trail<\/a>.\u00a0 Which the kids enjoyed more than they enjoyed all the picture-taking.<\/p>\n And, of course, we family renion-ed at the family farm.\u00a0 With second cousins or cousins\u00b3<\/span> or whatever.<\/p>\n Including the most recently arrived cousins.\u00a0 The twins.\u00a0 Which makes them (cousinsX2)\u00b2.\u00a0 Probably.\u00a0 Maybe.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n