No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

Children are so demanding. I wish someone had warned me about this before I had any of them. Actually, I guess they did, but I didn't listen. Lately, we keep hearing, "I want to go somewhere." Where? It doesn't matter. McDonald's? Sure. A friend's house? Of course. Mexico? Wait. We live there.

Anyway, this weekend we tried to satisfy this desire to go somewhere and do something, and we were busy. We packed so much exploration and sightseeing into two days that we barely had any time leftover to watch television. Still, it wasn't enough.

As you know, for at least six months we had been talking about finding the zonkey when we got to Tijuana. And for six months, Benjy had been listening to us talk about the zonkey. So when this sign appeared on the side of the road for Tijuana's basketball team the Zonkeys, Benjy was excited. Every time he saw the sign, he told me he wanted to go see the zonkey. He didn't care that it was a sign for basketball. It had a zonkey on it, and he wanted, nay, needed to see it. He also wanted to go "somewhere."

So Saturday morning, we decided to make his little dream come true. We drove down to Avenida Revolucion and set out to find Benjy a zonkey. It wasn't hard, since there is a zonkey on just about every corner of the touristy district of Tijuana, but we shopped and listened to a Mexican band and passed up several zonkeys before we found just the right one. Chris was still negotiating the price when Benjy donned a sombrero and climbed on the back of the zonkey. (Now if you know Benjy at all, you know that he is shy, and he is usually more than willing to give strangers that notice him the dirty look instead of a smile.) When I saw him straddling the zonkey with a huge smile on his face, I laughed out loud and climbed onto his zonkey cart. The next thing I knew, the zonkey caretakers were slapping sombreros on us and telling us to smile. I never even noticed that Jacob was wearing a sombrero with the word 'tequila' brazen across its brim.

Now usually this would have been more than enough excitement for one weekend, but the boys were hungry, so we drove around and around and around Tijuana until we found the perfect place to get some fish tacos and ceviche. After we finally got home and ate our fill of octopus and other fish tacos, Jacob loudly announced that it was time for "Family Movie Night." The boys crashed, exhausted, on the couch for the night with the first Harry Potter movie blaring from the television.

The next morning, however, we awoke to the familiar call to "go somewhere." Obviously, some sort of overachieving bug had infected us because we decided to have another adventure. We wrestled the kids through church, gorged ourselves on pancakes at IHOP and drove out to La Jolla, CA, where we'd heard there was excellent, but not too strenuous, seaside hiking. We didn't want anyone to regurgitate their pancakes.

What we found in La Jolla was Jacob's dream come true-- a whole beach with rocks and cliffs, caves and crevices, all for Jacob to explore. The wind whipped through his mohawk, the sand eeked into his sneakers, and the tide snuck up on his butt. But Jacob ignored all this, and ran and climbed, shouted and sang, all with Benjy trailing at his heels. He was in heaven.

Andrew found the beach to be so relaxing that he fell asleep before we discovered the crown jewel of La Jolla's beach-- a colony of seals. The Children's Pool was built with a concrete wall barrier to offer a safe beach for children to swim, but when a colony of seals took up residence in the tiny cove, the city got more than it had ever expected. Now you can find dozens of seals frolicking in the water and dozing in the sand.

 

The boys were mesmerized by the seals, and we stood on the bridge watching them for a long time. And even then, Andrew never woke up. He was at peace with the seals, enjoying an afternoon nap in the sun.

We finally headed to the car when Benjy's legs got tired and he noticed all the sand in his shoes. It's amazing how these sorts of nuisances never seem to bother the boys until they're ready to go home. Then it's all they can do not to go limp for the final yards back to the car.

As you can imagine, Chris and I were worn out by the time we got home. Two days of exploration and fun with the boys was about all we could stand. We planned to salvage the rest of the time left in the weekend laying on the couch while the kids entertained themselves. We had, after all, been entertaining them all weekend. Plus, we thought they'd be just as tired as us - in fact, they barely made it back to the car.

But they weren't. First Jacob wanted to play Life or Monopoly, so we told him they took too long. Then he got out the Dominos, and we told him they were too messy. So he brought us Uno, and we told him we were too tired. "But I want to play a game!" he said. After all the playing we'd already done, he expected more. It's like he couldn't get enough. The more we did, the more he wanted. The more he demanded.

And then they all got demanding. Andrew wanted his diaper changed, Benjy was hungry, and Jacob was still bored. "Can't we do something fun?" they asked.  And all I wanted to do was just lay on the couch. 

So, from now on, we're ditching this overachieving nonsense.  Instead, we're going to manage the kids' expectations.  Next weekend, we plan to ignore them.