Dan Lipka Web Log

Last week Lindy, Molly, and I, along with my father, step-mother, and sister, were going to San Francisco to spent time with my brother, his wife and their three boys. The day before I was to leave on my vacation to the west coast I was going to write a blog about how I expected the trip to be just as stressful and relaxing. Traveling across the country with a toddler, family bickering, miscommunications, bad planning, and many other things seem to contribute to the stress of the “family vacation”. I didn’t finish the blog because I a family member might have read it and I wanted to seem as positive as possible. Well, here is a recap of the week (as a full description would take too long). Day 1: We get to the airport at 1:00pm, expected to fly standby on a US Air flight at 3:30. We can fly free on US Air or very cheaply on another airline, always standby. Since it was a weekday afternoon we didn’t expect the planes to be packed. Well, they were. The 3:30 flight was

Me: “Molly, eat your noodles.” Molly: “No, I don’t want to. I want to eat green beans.” Me: “Molly, let’s go play with your crayons.” Molly: “I don’t want do, I want to read books.” Me: “Ok, this is the last running tackle hug”. (Molly runs and gives me a hug, knocking me over) Molly: “One more, want one more tackle hug please.” I tell Molly to do something and she says no; however, she offers an alternative choice that is better or at least equal to the one I made. Do I stick with my original edict or do I give in? Should I look at the choices and reevaluate based on what is possible and what will make us all happiest, or will that lead to her always thinking she can make the decisions (or that my orders are flexible and not set in stone). Then again, if I stick to my original decision and decide to never change it, maybe she will think I am inherently unfair or that I just make bad choices. I want to be consistent, but I also want to be flexible, is that p