By David Leonhardt

There is never a dull moment when you take a two-year-old on vacation. And there are always such marvelously fun lessons to learn, as well.

For instance, we allocated the first day of our 2003 vacation to Granby zoo. God decided to allocat that same day to watering his garden. OK, so it was not quite rain that fell. It was hardly worth the embarrassment of losing yet another fruitless struggle with that rusty old umbrella.

But it was more than just a mist. Little by little, it overtook me, nestling its way into my very being. My sneakers cried out "Squish! Squish!" with each step I took. My wife began calling me "Mr. Soggybottoms". I was feeling downright moldy.

Little Lady was in Seventh Heaven. This was her chance to finally take out her brand new umbrella – the one her way-too-picky father would not let her play with in the house. Today, she could play with it all day in the rainy mist or misty rain or whatever the big people wish to name it.

So the first lesson is to find the silver lining. It might be a soggy silver lining, but even soggy silver holds great value.

A few days later, we headed to a mountain park lookout. Along the paths, we found ourselves dodging speeding cyclists who thought "maximum 15 miles per hour" means "Yee-haw, we've reached warp speed!" This was Montreal, and the "15" part might have been lost in translation to some people.

We, ourselves, were lost, so we stopped to ask directions. The young man we approached pointed straight up. "It's a half an hour detour back the way you came, or you can pop up these stairs," he advised.

I doubted whether either my pregnant wife or Little Lady could handle the stairs, but they both wanted to try. (Seventh Heaven might be an umbrella, but a toddler's first six heavens usually involve climbing everything she sees – and she saw the mountain.)

At the top of the first flight, my wife thrilled to see that the next set of stairs was even higher. "Yay! More stairs to climb!" A lady passing us said, "Try counting them to pass the time. There are 205 steps." Was that meant to be encouraging?

Little Lady climbed about 180 steps before her engines lost their dilithium crystals, and my pregnant wife was able to keep to Little Lady's conveniently slow pace. I was left to carry one of them up the remaining 25 steps (no, not my wife!), where I dumped the stroller and picnic basket so we all could catch our breath.

So the second lesson is to not be surprised at what you can do when you try, not at what some people will try.

This vacation was also Little Lady's first attempt at swimming. We affixed the water wings to her arms and stayed close. This suited her just fine for almost three minutes and twenty two secends. Then she wanted to swim "all alone" (her very favorite words).

You might think that the biggest danger for a new swimmer is sinking. Or hitting your head on the edge of the pool. Or developing cramps from too many French fries just before swimming and drowning in your own cholesterol (or something like that).

It turns out that the biggest danger is a big mouth. To her credit, Little Lady closed her mouth whenever I reminded her. But just 3.2 seconds later, her mouth would be open again, shouting "Lookit me!" and "I did it!" and other eloquent cries muffled by the gurgle of water pouring into a gaping mouth.

So the third lesson is to get excited about life and shout it out to the world ... even if people do keep telling you to shut your mouth.

Next time you go on vacation, bring a toddler along. I promise you three things:

1. You will get less rest than Santa Claus on December 24.
2. You will always have a fun adventure.
3. You will learn more than you ever wanted to.