Vacationing with Toddlers: Photographed Moments and, Well, Not…

I’m starting to learn that a whole book could be written on pretty much every event you try to make your toddler a part of. And if you are like our family, we try everything. Going to the grocery store with a toddler, potty training a toddler, visiting Dollywood with a toddler – none of these are simple tasks.

Vacationing with a toddler – and in our case two toddlers – is definitely no different.

We visited Seabrook Island and Charleston, SC at the end of May this year with our three and a half year old twins and it occurred to me that we had the very best time, the biggest belly laughs, and we came home with the most wonderful memories that we will cherish forever. But, we also had some highly stressful and completely frustrating times too – times that only a toddler can create.

Being a photographer, I photographed so many of the happy times that we had. Of course it is what I want to remember! But that’s not really real life, is it? So here is what our vacation actually looked like – the photographed and the not so photographed moments. Because even though you can never fully be prepared, no matter how many books you read, I thought it might be helpful for anyone hitting the beach with a toddler, or two or three, to see what our beach trip actually looked like.

Pictured: On our first day on the beach, my kids, who hate to get messy, thought it was hilarious to sit in the sand by the water and put the “mud” on their legs and then let the waves wash it off. They ran into the water, letting the water chase them. They wore adorable matching bathing suits and my girl showed off in her new beach hat.

Not Pictured: Two tired parents who had just driven seven hours with two kids who didn’t nap the entire time, and who just wanted to sit on the beach for a minute, but were immediately fielding “I want to build a sand castle,” “I want to go find sea shells,” “I want to go in the water,” “No, I want you to stay in the sand with me.” Because it wasn’t their first trip to the beach, they remembered  all of the things that we had done in years past and they wanted to do it ALL the second we got there. And one kid wanted to do the opposite of the other with the opposite parent that volunteered. It was exhausting!

Pictured: On our second day we just so happened to have some family in Charleston that was visiting from Chicago and California so we decided to go meet them for an early lunch. Seabrook is about an hour from Charleston so we left in the morning and went to the place where we were going to meet everyone a little early. We LOVED running up and down the docks, looking at the boats, paddleboarders, kayakers, and even a few dolphins. My family that was visiting had never met our kids so we loved getting to see them!

Not Pictured: Me asking the kids at the restraunt if they needed to go to the bathroom before the food came and them both saying no. Then the food comes, my son immediately has to go potty so I say that his daddy is going to take him. Oliver immediately bursts out into tears in his loudest cry that he wants mommy to take him. As soon as I get back, Olivia needs to go potty. Ugh!

Pictured: Day three we broke out the squirt guns that daddy bought for the trip. It was so much fun to watch them learn how to use them. They really take some figuring out so I was a proud little mama sitting in my chair watching their little wheels turn. And I guess it was bound to happen that they would figure out that they can look like they are peeing when they use them. The second Oliver did this we were all cracking up and laughing forever. They also thought it was really funny to squirt each other in the face. We had a blast!

Not Pictured: Can we talk about how my newly potty trained kids had to go to the bathroom every five minutes on the beach? And instead of actually finding a bathroom we taught them the joy of peeing in the ocean – basically the opposite of what we’ve been teaching them for the last five months. Sure, just go ahead and pee on yourself – it’s ok because you’re in the water. That’s not confusing at all! Also, it’s really funny when you squirt each other in the face and chase each other with water until it’s not funny to one of your little crazies. And then it becomes a full-fledged fight with lots of tears.

Pictured: One day we went to the beach three times! Morning, after nap, and after dinner. I wanted to snap a photo of all of us at the beach so we went out before the sunset and we played. My kids ran and ran until their little feet couldn’t run any longer. We threw them all around, hugged a lot, and laughed because daddy was being a crazy dancer. It was so much fun!

Not Pictured: Both kids fell and scraped their knees on the pavement as we walked to the beach. BOTH! So while I’m carrying every toy ever created for sand, beach towels, sun glasses, sunscreen, my very weighty camera, I’m also playing nurse. Twice!

Pictured: Our second to last day of vacation was a pretty cloudy day so we decided to go back into Charleston. We took the water taxi which my kids loved. We saw more dophins and boats and they loved the way the boat swayed back and forth. There was a waterfont park at the stop we made that they enjoyed just running around in. They played in fountains and we walked around with nowhere to go.

Not Pictured: Eating out with toddlers has circled back around to being one of my least favorite things to do with them. I felt like every time we did, all I said was “eat your food” over and over and over again. There’s so much newness on vacation that those little bodies can’t sit still, especially in a restaurant. And because lunch went long we had to wait an extra hour for the water taxi to come back which led to some very tired children. Oliver layed down on the boat on a seat – the furthest one he could find away from us. And then we carried him kicking and screaming to the car because he couldn’t get off the boat all by himself. He was asleep in the car five minutes after we started back to Seabrook.

Pictured: I came prepared with lots of things for the kids to do because I knew that even on the beach they would get bored. So I saved some sailboats for them to play with a few days in at low tide, when there were tidal pools of water on the beach. It was perfect!

Not Pictured: One night we were walking along the beach looking for sea shells and I thought I spotted one. I walked over, half paying attention picked it up and when I did I realized it was bird poop! When I started screaming the kids thought it was the funniest thing ever. We laughed about this the entire trip.

Of course, with any vacation there are a lot of memories which aren’t photographed. On the last night I had tears in my eyes because I realized just how much less they needed me at the beach than the last time we visited and how the next time we come, it will be even less.

I didn’t even have my camera the day we sat on the beach even though it was a little chilly and my girl climbed in my lap and we snuggled in a towel and talked. Or the time in the car when Oliver went through every letter of the alphabet and was able to tell us a word that started with that letter (and asked us over and over what else starts with that letter). The bed time stories we just made up because we left our books in the car or the times they simply said they were just having so much fun.

Vacations are special times together as a family. As we headed back to our home in Knoxville and to our dog we missed, a line from a play I once saw called Philidelphia, Here I Come popped into my head: “Just the memory of it, that’s all we have now, just the memory. And even now, even so soon, it is being distilled of all its coarseness and what’s left is going to be precious, precious gold.”