Travels with Sprout

Sprout and I have spent the last week adventuring.

Sunday morning I attended the memorial service for my beloved friend, bonus father figure, Buddhist Monk, and author Terrence Keenan. It was at Hoenji, which is the Zen Center of Syracuse. After the service was over my husband and Sprout joined the gathering for lunch, and we spent a lovely hour with his kids, who are the dearest of friends, before Sprout and I took off for southern Pennsylvania. We spent the night at a Home2Suites hotel, which, by the way, are great hotels and that one gives a steep discount to anyone there for Nemours Children’s Hospital.

Monday morning we crossed into Delaware and Sprout had her medical appointments at Nemours. They went great – she’s thriving. She needs more PT to work on some mobility quirks related to her dwarfism and knee surgeries, but is doing really well.

That afternoon we went to a family fun center where she played games and won prizes and had an absolute blast. Her best games are throwing games – basketball, bowling, ring toss – the kid’s got an arm on her!

Tuesday we toured the Nemours Estate, which bored the socks off Sprout but which I enjoyed immensely. The grounds in particular are absolutely gorgeous.

We then headed to DC for 6 nights at a tiny basement apartment Air BNB.

In DC, we have done the following:

• National Children’s Museum, where she slid on a slide repeatedly until she got motion sickness, and learned a little science
• Smithsonian Natural History Museum, where she saw mummies, dinosaur bones, all sorts of bugs and spiders, and learned about evolution for the first time.
• Smithsonian Asian Art Museum, which was a short visit because Sprout realized she had left her backpack at the cafe where we had lunch, and we had to rush back to retrieve it. But she did love that all the artists were Asian, like her!
• The National Zoo, which was the highlight of the trip for both of us, really. We caught a sea lion show and saw otters and seals, all manner of birds and some bears, giant fish and snakes, and even some big cats. The zoo is a lovely park, filled with botany and wild birds, and we were there early in the day so there were no crowds. A perfect day.
• Arlington National Cemetery, which I think overwhelmed both of us with the sheer number of graves and its consequent oppressive atmosphere. She really wanted to see it since she’s fascinated by cemeteries, but this may have cured her of that fascination for a while.
• Washington Monument and the Capitol, which we only saw from a bit of a distance but we talked about their significance. We also talked about the Lincoln Memorial and the process involved in the freeing of enslaved people in this country, though we never made it to the Lincoln Memorial.
• The Yards Park, where Sprout is happily splashing in the big pool while we wait for a friend who lives in DC to join us.

Things I’ve learned about my kid this week:

• She loves seeing lots of Black and Asian folks around her, reinforcing that we have to move before too long, to a more diverse area.
• She told me she wants to learn Burmese, so I’ve put out feelers to try to find her a tutor. I asked two acquaintances for ideas. One replied that I should check with Catholic Charities because they work with a lot of Burmese refugees. Smart idea – we may even be able to find someone who was a teacher in Burma.
• She’s a phenomenal travel buddy… so long as you feed her often and thoroughly. She’s walked long distances with little complaint, and shown interest in nearly everything we saw and talked about. She asks smart questions, is good natured, and responds promptly when I ask her to do things. She’s just such a good kid. This fact was really reinforced at the Children’s Museum where I watched moms run after their kids who were about Sprout’s age, and drag them by the arm as they went limp refusing to leave. When we left I just had to ask her nicely, she asked for one more trip down the slide, which I granted, and we were happily off.
• She keeps a pace similar to my own, meaning she needs lots of down time. We’ve spent our mornings and early afternoons being busy and our afternoons relaxing at our Air BNB before returning to the town for dinner. She’s let me nap when I needed it. She’s slept 12 hours each night with me. She’s even able to articulate when she’s overstimulated and needs a break from noise and confusion.
• She’s flexible. She prefers Ubers, but has had a lot of patience with the Metro, changing trains and going up and down escalators single file so people can pass us. She’s perfected a little pirouette after stepping onto the escalator so she can get in front of me and not let go of my hand.

Honestly, it’s been an excellent trip in every way. She’s even had patience with my taking a zillion pictures of her. The only times that have been rough have been when I accidentally let her get hangry, and when she’s gotten a little motion sick on a tour bus, so we had to divert and do other things instead.

Tomorrow we will get up before dawn, pack up the car (which is currently parked in so I hope a car on one end or the other of my vehicle moves in the course of the day) and pick up Seth at the airport. That’s assuming flights are flying after the big mess with air traffic computers going down! Assuming he arrives as planned, we will drive down to Virginia to spend several days with Seth’s parents and sisters and Sprout’s new cousins. She’s super excited to be able to call them her cousins officially now. 🙂

Here’s to travel adventures with great kids!