I Want to Enjoy My Kids

I want to enjoy my kids.

We want us to have fun together. Not near each other — together. The same fun, at the same time.

And most of the time, one of us doesn't get to. Because most of the time, somebody isn't having the experience with the kids. Somebody's managing it.

Running it, not having it

At the playground, the kids play. One of us watches the exits, tracks who wandered where, clocks the kid about to go down the big slide headfirst. The kids are playing. A parent is working.

At a restaurant, they eat, or more often they don't, and one of us spends the meal negotiating whether anyone can stay in a chair long enough for the other to taste their food. The kids are having dinner (sort of). A parent is managing dinner.

On a trip, they see something new and somebody's three steps ahead, thinking about the nap window, the bathroom, the parking, the meltdown coming in forty minutes. The kids are on an adventure. A parent is running logistics for an adventure they're not really on.

That's the part nobody warns you about. It's not that family outings are hard. It's that at any given moment, one of us is almost never at them. One of us is making it happen for everyone else, standing just outside the fun, keeping it from falling apart.

And it trades off all day. My husband takes the baby for a diaper change so I get a couple minutes actually playing with our older daughter. Then I pack up the snacks and chase the toddler so he can have a real conversation with her. We hand the metaphorical clipboard back and forth. Neither of us is doing it wrong. That's the trap — even when you split it perfectly, someone's always holding it. The job doesn't go away. It just changes hands.

What we both actually want — the thing we got in the car for in the first place — is to be in it. At the same time. With them, and with each other.

The times it flips

It doesn't happen often. But every so often, nobody's running it, and we're all just in it — and we feel the difference immediately.

A hotel room in LA. We were traveling, and we wanted a good meal not just something we could get back home, but we also didn't want to spend an hour wrestling two kids through a real restaurant for food they wouldn't touch. So we ordered sushi to the room based on the front desk’s recommendation. Genuinely great sushi, on a hotel bed, while the girls ran laps around the room feeling fancy and looking at the city and giggling. My husband and I still call it the best night of the trip. It took us a while to see why. It was the first time all day neither of us was managing anything. The kids didn't need a chair. We got to eat something we loved, across from each other, actually talking, while our kids were happy three feet away. We were both just there. Together — all four of us.

A museum I know too well. I took the girls to the museum on my own, and because I've been there a hundred times, I knew I could see almost the whole play area from one bench. So I sat down. I didn't hover. I didn't trail my toddler. I didn't nag my older one to stay close. And they went. My toddler wandered the play creek barefoot until she looked up, a little unsure where I was — and I was right there. Her sister played with her without me refereeing every second. Because I stopped running it, I finally got to watch it. I got to see them as them, instead of as a list of things that might go wrong. (This one I could only pull off solo because I knew the place cold — which tells you how rare the conditions have to be.)

A firehouse kitchen. It had been a tough night at home and we needed out. My husband was on shift, so I took our older daughter to visit him at work while my younger daughter stayed home with my sister, where it was his turn to cook for the crew. She climbed right into the kitchen and helped him with every step of dinner, happier than she'd been in days. And here's the part I keep coming back to: he wasn't managing her either. He wasn't supervising a kid in a roped-off zone. He was cooking, for real, and she was cooking with him, for real, and the two of them were just doing the thing side by side. I sat at the dining table talking to the firefighters. For once, neither of us was the operator. We were both just in it, with her, at the same time.

What we're actually after

I don't think we're chasing activities. We've got plenty to do.

I think we're chasing the version of an afternoon where we get to have it with our kids instead of running it for them. Where neither of us is the operator standing at the edge, keeping the fun going for everyone else. Where we both get to be in it too.

That's the whole thing, under the gear and the packing and the tight-rope timing of naps and snacks. Not more time near our kids. Time actually with them — where the clipboard is down, and we're just there, being people, next to people we love who get to see us being them.

It doesn't happen every time. Honestly, it doesn't happen most times. And it's not because one of us isn't pulling their weight — we trade off all day, and the job's still always there in someone's hands.

But it can happen. A hotel bed with good sushi. A bench at a place I know by heart. A firehouse kitchen on a bad night.

Those are the afternoons we're actually in it. Not running the fun.

Having it.

Aviarie is building gear for parents that are going places. More soon.