Hello World. Are you ready for Beans?

At 31 months, the Beans have been on more plane trips than their father had by the time he was 31. Now the count is 6 to 4, but only because Daddy Bean and I squired ourselves away for a little R&R to Puerto Rico last year and left the little ones with the grandparents. Otherwise it would be all tied up.

I’ve lived in three different countries in my life. Three states. For the first sixteen years of my life, plane trips were more common than road trips. Daddy Bean had never been to Chicago before I met him. Never stepped foot in Canada. He hadn’t even been to the northern part of Michigan, for God’s sake! His only trip out of the state was to South Carolina one year with his family. We were like night and day, this boy and me. He wanted to stay, I wanted to go. I won.

By the time the girls were born, we had been to Chicago almost every year that we were together (including the year that they were born, when he had to wheel my 25 week pregnant body around the Windy City - not as easy as it sounds). Toronto, Orlando. All over Michigan. What was supposed to be his first flight on our honeymoon in Vegas ended up being a road trip to Florida, due to the 9/11 tragedy and the grounding of all flights. Instead his first flight was to Las Vegas for my sister’s wedding. The Beans’ first flight was to Oklahoma last year.

He’s caught on to my need to go. Even if it’s just to Mackinac Island. Although he was resistant at first, he’s begun to enjoy traveling and he understands why I want to make sure that the Beans discover a love for it. The thought of flying still terrifies him, but he hides it well from them. He has to. I won’t have it. There is too much to see and do to be hindered by such a fear. And, before it has a chance to take one of them too, I want to go. I want to take them to my old stomping grounds in Virgina and Washington D.C. I want to show them the beauty of Big Sur. I want to introduce them to my mother’s sister and share some world-class food in the middle of the busy streets of Bangkok.

Tomorrow, we’ll be taking them on their next plane ride to Oklahoma to meet their new cousin. They are giddy with excitement. In September, they’ll be traveling to Vegas to act as flower girls in their aunt’s wedding. Next year - Disney and hopefully either Boston or California. After that, who knows. I hope Barcelona, Dublin, Phuket, Montreal. Wherever they want to go.