by Phil Stott

Here's a tip I just learned on vacation: if you want to get to know your kids' personalities, spend two weeks in a car with them. Having just got back from a road trip with my 20-month old daughter, I'm blown away by just how much of her own little person she's become-and mostly while I've been too busy working/commuting/doing other stuff to notice.

Crossing from New Jersey back into New York on the final day of my family road trip was something of a bittersweet moment. While part of me was ready to get back to work and the order of my day-to-day life, another part of me could have kept going in the car for weeks longer. (Admittedly, there's a little more of me to go around for all those feelings after the trip-despite packing a cooler and vowing to stop at supermarkets for fresh produce as often as possible, the lure of the fast food outlets often proved to be stronger and easier than the desire to get off the highway and find a healthier alternative.)

The part of me that wanted to stay in the car is the family-loving part of me. I learned so much about my daughter, and about how she interacts with my wife, and what she likes and dislikes, and her own little sense of humor, that I could happily have spent much more time there wrapped up in that little cocoon. And that's despite a lot of things: the kids CD's that we set to repeat one song over and over (made worthwhile when Maeve spontaneously serenaded us with three verses-who knew there was more than one?-of "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" right as we were crossing back into Long Island); the challenge of finding and storing something as basic as fresh milk; the interrupted nap times that come from living out of a car; the constant schlepping of the Pack and Play from the car to a hotel room and back again.

In the end, there were several factors that have made me glad to get back to my daily life. Diet, as alluded to above, is one of them. Structure (for me, but especially for Maeve), is another. And, having not seen much more than 10 minutes of news per day and having had no internet access at all for much of the vacation, I was eager to get back to a state of feeling connected to the wider world. Whether that makes me a bad parent or not, I don't know; all I do know is that I need a certain amount of "adult time" to keep me from feeling like my brain is turning to mush, and 17 straight plays of "Wheels on the Bus" doesn't quite do it for me. 

Like all good vacations, then, I've returned refreshed, and with some new goals-both for my work and my family life. Driving through Indiana, Southern Ohio, and West Virginia (we took the long way home from Wisconsin) and seeing signs proclaiming that the latest section of road work was being funded by the stimulus bill has made me more grateful than ever to still be in the same job I had before the recession started, and I'm determined to take advantage of the new opportunities presenting themselves in my office as the turnaround begins (assuming it's the real thing, of course).

It's on the family front, however, that I've realized I have most work to do. The older Maeve gets, the more I realize that I want and need to be involved in her life, and in learning and shaping who she is as a person. Having been introduced to facets of her personality that the hours I work hadn't allowed me to see before, I'm determined not to turn into the guy who only has time for his kids two weeks every year. That's going to involve me taking a long look at my priorities and making some tough choices and sacrifices, but the more time I spend as a Dad, the more I'm coming to realize that that's exactly what sets the good ones apart from the great ones.