DAYS 4 AND 5: BECOMING TRAVELERS

EDINBURGH — I would, of course, be lying if I said traveling for 5.5 weeks sans itinerary with two kids under 5 is all sunshine and rainbows. Parenting victories come easier when you’ve got home court advantage, armed with a fleet of attention-diverting toys and a pantry of tried-and-true foods, familiar beds and respected time-out corners. Doesn’t mean it's not still great, but there are some aspects that make it feel like we’ve got long odds.

Take, for example. the simple logistics of getting from Point A to Point B. We’re not traveling with car seats — they would’ve missed the early exit in London and been checked through to Barcelona — so we’re only using public transportation for now. The kids are slowly but surely learning the right and wrong ways to ride trains and buses, but they inherently see poles and seats as irresistible invitations to climb and throngs of people as encouragement to practice lateral sprints. Add luggage to the mix, and we have certifiably lost all control.

And then there’s the time change to contend with. Our bodies and our brains are still battling over what time it is, and I’m pretty sure we’re all on four different biological schedules. When we traveled abroad with the kids in the past, we went out of our way to avoid shifting their internal clocks; we tolerated having them stay up till midnight or 1:00AM, and loved having them sleep until 10:00AM or 11:00AM. But now that we’re here to stay, we decided to try and acclimate naturally over time — in retrospect, a poor choice. We’ve had to rely on the kids to tell us when they’re hungry and tired, which — when you’re talking to a girl who communicates her hunger by melodramatically hurling her body onto the floor, and a boy who swears he stays awake in his bed all night, every night — have not provided the most dependable cues.

Aaron and I agree that we never [ever ever] would have chosen to take this trip unprompted; even for two non-Spanish speakers moving to Spain, that would've seemed a little absurd. But now that we're here, I will say: it's actually pretty fun. Obviously there are moments when I wish I could just jump, unfettered, into a carseat-less cab or tend solely to my own jet-lag issues or pack only my own suitcase, but it's been really neat to watch the kids adapt and settle into being mini-nomads. On our train trip up to Edinburgh from London this morning, both kids were adamant about carrying their own backpacks and their own suitcases. Onlookers thought we were singlehandedly the worst parents ever, but hey, you gotta learn sometime...