My husband has to travel for work this year on my birthday, which really doesn’t bother me at all. We probably wouldn’t do anything on my actual birthday anyway, and honestly wouldn’t do much to celebrate any other day because we have two under two and I also just don’t care about my birthday.

He suggested that the kids and I go with him on his trip and we tack on a few extra days and make it a little holiday. He and I used to do this a lot before we had kids and it was always really nice, but with little ones (they’ll be 23mo and 2mo at the time) I just think it would end up being more stressful than enjoyable. Driving 7 hours each way, having to pack for them both, get them settled in pack n plays in one hotel room. It’s not like we’d be able to go out for dinner (or even lunch!), they are in bed by 7:00 and our toddler naps from 12-2:30. My husband is terrible at baby wearing so when we go out I’d have to always wear the baby unless we wanted to cart our huge double stroller with us. (I don’t even think we’d have room for that and the pack n plays.) It takes ages to get both kids ready to go out too, between nursing and diaper changes etc etc, we wouldn’t even have much time to explore the city.

I know he’s trying to do something nice because he doesn’t want to leave me alone with the kids and also so I’m not alone on my birthday, but honestly I think taking the kids on myself at home would be easier than taking them on together in a different place. And I said that to him (very nicely and with a lot of appreciation for the thought behind his suggestion!) and said that it’ll be a really nice thing to do when they get a little older, but he seemed so disappointed. Should I just suck it up and go?