How Things Change

We are spending the week at a kid friendly hotel in Cornwall, venturing briefly away from the self-catering holidays of our recent past and treating ourselves to what we think is a well deserved break from the usual work/at home routine. From our ‘villa,’ which is really a glorified hotel room, we look down onto the sea and the cliffs of Cornwall, as well as a playground, a trampoline, a football field and a little log house, in which there is a small plastic kitchen for tiny hands to try out their cooking skills using plastic fruits, vegetables, pate and spaghetti, among other delicacies. In London we hear seagulls who have relocated to Hampstead Heath in favour of easily accessed bread over the hard work of catching fish, but here they are squawking away in a more appropriate habitat. Bunnies chase each other back and forth across the lawn outside of our sliding glass doors. If we could block out the view of the playground and football pitch and if it wasn't for the glaring and unignorable fact that we are sharing our ‘villa’ with nineteen month old Tasmanian Devil, Evie, it would be the perfect setting for a romantic holiday.

Here, we are surrounded by other families with small children and all share the same weary look that comes from months and years of not getting enough sleep. In the morning, hours before we actually want to be awake, we troop up with our small charges for breakfast. All around, high pitched mommy voices urge their children to eat and daddy voices cheer for each bite of eggs or cereal or fruit that is consumed. Every morning some child at a neighboring table has a breakfast related meltdown. Then it’s off to various activities or, in our case, to drop our precious and not quite willing daughter off at a Kids’ Club for so that we can revel in the few hours each day that we have to ourselves. She cries and we feel briefly guilty and slightly teary ourselvdes, but also elated. What will we do with this precious time? How will we wile away the child free hours?

It takes us a few days to settle into our new found free time. Our first day is rainy so Jim and I take a drive to a nearby village to buy some fruit and diapers and attempt to walk to the beach. Despite being cold and soggy and the fact that I unwisely am wearing flip flops, we are still a little giddy at the prospect of being out and about in car, without having to worry about when we are going to feed Evie and whether we have remembered the wipes and the stroller and the sunhat and the binky. After a brief argument in the car on our second day, we take a walk down and back up steep steps to an impressive beach near our hotel. Fortunately we both enjoy the walk, but trying to squeeze lunch in causes unnecessary stress at the end of the outing and we barely make it back to Kids’ Club in time to pick up Evie without being penalized.  Finally, three days in, we seem to have gotten the hang of it, spending most of our three hours of child free time in a spa, being pampered. The downside is that this option comes at considerable cost…but we’re just ignoring that part for now.

In the afternoons, post-Kids’ Club and nap time, we head down to the beach, where I have managed so far not to wear a bathing suit. Yesterday, with my seven months pregnant belly as an excuse, I perched on some rocks and watched as Jim and Evie went racing into the waves. Despite having proven to us on many occasions that she is neither scared of lizards or tarantulas, of swinging high or of climbing high, of trampolines or of most other things that babies should be afraid of, Evie still has surprised us with her enthusiasm for the beach and the waves. She seems to think that she is part mermaid and keeps Jim very busy with her darting in and out and jumping over the waves. Unfortunately for me and for everyone who gets to witness me in a bathing suit at this stage of pregnancy, I, too, am probably going to have to join in the frigid Cornwall water fun this afternoon, as the pressure is on from my little, enthusiastic family.

On the beach, other families from our hotel dig in the sand and dads emerge from the water in skin tight, rented wet suits, which amplify their middle aged guts. Jim, joking that the body suits for middle aged dads have built in extra space in the belly area, has yet to succumb to the temptation of renting a heated wet suit and heading out to relive his youth on a boogie board, but he has done some pretty impressive body surfing. Overall, we, the parents at this hotel, are a pretty average looking bunch, with our slight paunches, sagging post-childbirth breasts and stomachs and varicose veins. There was a glamorous looking American couple here when we first arrived—he looking trim and fit and she, tall and slim and elegant and stylish with her third baby in her arms-- but fortunately they went back to London, letting the rest of us off the hook. Happily, we schlep down to the beach or to the pool in our matronly bathing suits and peddle pushers and pasty skin and then back up again to the evening kids’ activities, where the parents can have a drink while the children are entertained by magicians or dance parties or balloon men. Then, back to the dining room, where the tables are formally set for parents, with colourful plastic cups and plates and high chairs for the children and the wait staff are all beautiful, young, fresh looking twenty somethings who go for a quick surf down at the beach between shifts. Again, the cajoling to eat all around and my own threats of ‘no ice cream unless you eat your string beans.’ No matter what, Evie always manages to get her ice cream, because, after all, this is her holiday, too.

After a day of trekking to and fro and ball pools and swing sets and beaches and bunnies, we try to relax in bed with a book while our over-stimulated and over-sugared offspring bounces around in her crib and calls our names from the other side of a thin mat that serves as a wall between us. In the old days, we would have gone for a romantic stroll in the dunes, or dangled our feet off the end of a pier, or had wine under the stars, but now we decide that maybe it would be best to turn the lights out at 8:30 so that she’ll go to sleep, because she’s obviously tired. And so are we.