A traveling ritual between my youngest and me (8/40)

I was in Puerto Aventuras, Mexico, with my wife and daughters. We were there to celebrate New Year’s with my family.

The first night, my youngest woke up and needed me to walk her around like she typically does when we are traveling.

That makes it sound like she looks at me like a British old lady and says, “I need you to walk me around because I can’t sleep.”

So maybe a more accurate description is that I need to walk her around so her mom and sister can sleep, so at least half of my family is ready for the following day.

This has now become part of our routine whenever we travel. She is unable to sleep in the travel crib like her sister did.

So I walk her around so my wife and my oldest sleep.

I took the stroller out, put on some shoes, put my daughter in the stroller, and off we went.

It is frustrating at first, but once the frustration passes, I can settle into the intimacy of my daughter and me walking in the middle of the night in a completely new place surrounded by silence. I wonder if she struggles to sleep or is used to spending quality time with Dadda whenever we are in new places.

The walks are calming, but I was close to falling asleep that night as I was walking her. The results of two days of travel with less than four hours of sleep each night.

We came up to a statue of what I think is a Mexican mythological figure. He was buffer than Schwarzenegger in his Gold’s Gym days. The man was holding a club that looked like a snake and had a wolf sling around his head.

My daughter pushed her body out of the stroller, looked up at the sculpture, pointed at it, and laughed, “Silly.”

I have never been prouder.

A meat head is a meat head, no matter what culture.

And all meatheads are silly.