Traveling with Michael

Hey everyone!

I'm so excited to be back from traveling in Europe the last month. A lot of people asked if Michael would ever visit Poland one day, and I really do hope so. A majority of our family lives there, and Michael's got so many relatives that love him and wish to see him one day. 

For this week's post, I wanted to talk about how we travel with Michael. He loves going on adventures and visiting new places, but the traveling part comes with some challenges.

In particular, the hardest thing is taking Michael to the bathroom. Michael used to only be able to go to the bathroom at home and at school, and would hardly ever go anyplace else. This made it challenging when we would travel to Yosemite as kids, since Michael would sometimes manage holding it for 8 hours until we got to the campground. Even after waiting at multiple rest areas, Michael wouldn't go to the bathroom. 

Recently he's been doing much better about going to the bathroom outside of his comfort areas, but he's never been on an airplane. Sitting on a plane for hours is miserable enough for us already, but it would be especially difficult for Michael. I honestly have no idea how he would handle sitting in the small seats, or if he would even want to walk into the plane in the first place.

There are times where Michael doesn't even want to walk into a new friends house, and we'll have to calm him down for a few minutes until he'll actually want to walk in. There's no telling how he would behave while trying to board a plane with a bunch of passengers. Since he also hates the sound of kids screaming, if a baby was on the flight he'd also have a rough time dealing with that. As for how he would react with turbulence, I'd assume he would start panicking, so it would be in our best interest to consciously sedate him (like many dentists do for kids who are too anxious).

With that, I'm not sure if we could ever do a trip to Poland with Michael anytime soon (even though trust me, it's definitely on my bucket list to show him the world), it's a great thing that Michael already lives next to his favorite thing-- the ocean!

Maybe one day in the future we can figure something out with him travel farther, but as of now, we'll continue taking advantage of our opportunity to explore Southern California :)

Back from an old trip to Yosemite when we were younger 

Facetiming with Michael during my recent trip to Europe-- it was so nice to get a smile out of him! :)