After arriving home from our holiday I felt exhausted and in need of another holiday to recover. Which is not really how you would expect to feel after the holiday of a lifetime and come to think of it not how you would normally define a holiday. If you look up the definition of holiday in the dictionary it will probably look something like this;

You see words like ‘break’, ‘rest’ and ‘week off’ which was relevant to the pre-kid years as you were able to break away from the routine, recuperate from the hectic life and you really lived the ‘week off’. This is not quite the case when you’re on holiday with the kids. Because kids will still be kids regardless of which side of the world you’re on, they’ll still need the comfort of a routine, they’ll still need their sleep and unlike any other job in the world being a mum is something you’ll just never be able to have a ‘week off’ from.

So maybe it’s about changing the expectations and redefining the holiday, because that’s why we always feel deflated right – when outcomes don’t quite match our expectations? You need to remember that the little people travelling with you don’t understand the approach, ‘yeah sure why not you’re on holiday’ because they can’t quite grasp it and the ‘lets stay out for another drink’ is really going to screw you the next day when they are all evil tired.

So I’ve sat and ran through my expectations of holidays and kind of come to the conclusion that I am a bit of a knob and I really need to alter them. So here’s my stab at changing them and trying to look at things in a different way.

So considering all of the above, we nailed it. Becoming a parent is life changing. Holidays are no exception. Life, including holidays, is different, but different in a fucking awesome way.

For more on family holidays see my Holiday Memoirs

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