Vacations: Bring young kids vs. Leave 'em behind

[sunsplash]

When you've gone on vacations in the past, what age were your kids when you felt comfortable leaving them overnight for days at a time (with someone of course)? How long were you gone for? What's the maximum number of days you would feel comfortable leaving them, knowing they could handle you being gone?

I'm starting to plan our Leap Year Anniversary and I'm stuck for what to do. My husband thinks another 5-star all-inclusive beach holiday is the way to go...I on the other hand am feeling like, been there/done that - they're all the same after a while. Relaxing, sure, but I'd rather take advantage of the sites of the world while we have the chance!

This brings up the problem of our daughter, who is 17 months right now. For a beach vacation somewhere we could bring her, though she'd be just a few months away from turning 3. I'm not convinced an island resort vacation would be all that relaxing with a tot, even if there was daycare available. So...we could leave her behind (at our home with my mother who offered to visit) - but the vacations I'm looking at are 8-12 days long. Now, at the present time I haven't left her for more than 13 hours, and that wasn't even an overnight trip...we left in the morning before she woke up and came back after dinner. From what I was told she did great and didn't even know we were gone, went down for her nap no problem, etc. But a week+ is a long time. I know 17 months old is a lot different from being almost 3 so I just don't know what an acceptable amount of time to leave her would be. Or if we should at all.

The vacations I'm looking at aren't suited for a child as young as she'll be because they'd have a lot of travelling and excursions (plus she wouldn't appreciate the experience yet) so I'm torn: do we do a generic beach vacation (again) and just bring her? Do we go have a dream adventure alone? This is our once every four years BIG vacation so I don't want to do a shorter trip but maybe I need to suck it up until she's older...

Advice?

 

[ninerbuff]

We've taken our daughter (6 now) to every vacation we've gone on. I honestly don't feel it ever held us back. If you need the vacation to "get away" from the child/children, then of course by all means do it. I know many moms that truly need it. But for myself and my wife, we'd never leave our daughter out of a vacation.
We did the Disney Cruise (twice) once for our honeymoon and the 2nd time with our daughter. I actually had more fun on the 2nd because I saw how joyful my daughter was when interacting with everyone on the ship.

 

[sunsplash]

No, it has nothing to do with needing a break from her. My concern is completely selfish - not being able to do the same things as we could without her. In my other travel thread I mentioned that a top contender is Egypt...I can't expect an almost 3 year old to be cool with visting tombs, riding camels, hiking, etc. She's accompanied us to every other vacation so far, all resorts or family visits, so it just seems that to take her again - we'd have to do something equally as "easy"...that's the only way I can think to put it.