First off a disclaimer: this will be a long post. If you actually read the whole thing, kudos
to you! I will give you a cookie!
Okay, you really don’t get a cookie, but still, good for you
for sticking it out!
Well, we did it. I am
not quite sure how we managed it, but somehow we survived our first trip to
visit family with both kids. Amazingly,
it went incredibly smoothly. I just have
to take this moment to say that my children are incredible. Frog Face slept most of the way down and back
(about an 8 hour drive each way) and Goober played with toys and watched movies
on the little dvd player (an absolute must if you are traveling with
children). A few melt downs here and
there, but nowhere near what I was expecting!
And then once we got there, we faced messed up schedules, dozens of new
faces and new places, extra hours being cooped up in a crowded car, and still
hardly a complaint. We received so many
comments about how well Frog Face behaved and Avery was just a joy and after
taking about 5-10 minutes to warm up, she was playing with family and generally
being her adorable self.
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| Goober playing with Comp Geek |
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| Goober snuggling with Barbie |
So here is a recap on our trip and some tips to traveling
with children. One of my dearest friends
from middle school through high school was getting married and I was a
bridesmaid (or brides matron I suppose, since I am definitely not a maid
anymore) so this trip was to participate in her special day. While this was our first trip with two kids,
we have traveled many times with Goober so we are experienced long-distance car
riders.
First our schedule:
Thursday: 4:30pm leave for MO
1:30am – arrive at destination
3:00am – finally get both kids to bed after being wound up
at a new place
Friday: 8:00am – wake up
10:15am – leave to go meet my brother and new nephew
11:00am – arrive at brothers
12:30pm – leave brothers
1:00pm – arrive at parent’s house
2:00pm – attempt to get Goober down for a nap
4:00pm – Goober does not take a nap, but mommy, daddy, and
Frog Face nap instead
4:30pm – drive back to Barbie’s house (Barbie is the
Weatherman’s sister where we crashed during the trip) to drop off Goober
5:00pm – leave to go to wedding rehearsal
7:00pm – Wedding rehearsal
8:30pm – Rehearsal dinner
9:30pm – leave and drive back to Barbie’s house
12:00am – finally get kids to bed and get to bed ourselves
Saturday: 7:30am wake up
8:30am – drive to my parent’s house to drop off Goober
9:15am – arrive at parents
9:45am – leave for wedding
10:30am – arrive at hair dresser to get hair done
12:30pm – hair finally done and head to chapel
1:00pm – pictures
2:00pm – ceremony
2:30pm – more pictures
3:00pm – head to reception hall to set up
4:30pm – reception starts
8:15pm – head out to get Goober
9:30pm – head to Barbie’s house
12:00pm – finally get the kids to bed
Sunday: 8:30am wake up
10:30am – finally leave Barbie’s house after getting kids
up, dressed, and car packed
11:15am – arrive at the Weatherman’s family for a
Thanksgiving brunch
2:15pm – finally leave for home
11:00pm – arrive back at home
12:30am – finally get kids to bed
1:00am – finally crash ourselves
It was so crazy, especially since the wedding took up most
of the time and this was our first trip back with Frog Face so everyone wanted
to meet him. What follows are some
random incidents, tips, and words of wisdom from our trip.
No matter how I trim our packing list, we always end up
cramming our Pontiac vibe to the max! We
even left a lot of items behind that we normally would have brought (such as
the pack-n-play) in the spirit of saving space.
Our packing for the trip looked something like this: one suitcase for
each child, half a suitcase for me, half a suitcase for the Weatherman, and
then three extra bags per child for toys, food, blankets, etc. Children come with lots of stuff! Next time
we will bring less snacks from home and maybe pick up some cheap snacks along
the way since we might have gone a bit overboard and had two large bags of
food. No idea how we are going to fit
presents in that car when we head back in a couple weeks for Christmas. Maybe we can tie a child to the top of the
car… (okay, not really). The Weatherman
is still in denial that we will soon become a mini-van family, but this past
trip almost had him convinced.
I win worst mother of the year award for taking my
almost-five-month-old out in freezing weather without socks. We are not even five minutes down the road
before Frog Face pulled both socks off and was playing with is bare toes. I lost count of how many times I tried to put
the socks back on, but that little turd was persistent! I eventually gave up and just wrapped him up
well in a blanket whenever we left the car. Next trip: footy pajama’s!
So about two hours down the road we stopped for dinner at
Wendy’s. If you are planning a long car
ride with kids in the next couple weeks, I suggest avoiding Wendy’s. Or at least avoid the kids menu at Wendy’s. Goober was thrilled to receive a plastic toy
recorder/flute in her kid’s meal. For
the next four hours until she finally fell asleep, we had to listen to Goober
tooting shrilly on what she called her “toy”.
Thankfully, Frog Face slept through it all.
And speaking of toys in the car, I packed a ton of stuff for
Goober to play with that was travel appropriate (magna doodle, drawing case with
coloring books and crayons, books, little dvd player, way too many dvd’s) but
really all I needed was a flashlight for her to play with when it got dark, and
the little dvd player. Thank the Lord
for that little dvd player and the fact that she now has a longer attention
span! However, we did somehow manage to
lose one dvd and the case of another dvd (which happened to come from the
libarary…opps).
This was our first trip with Goober potty trained. It wasn’t as horrible as I thought it would
be. We stopped every 3 hours or so and
made her go potty and she was really good about it. There was only one time that we heard the
dreaded “I need to go potty!” and thankfully we were relatively close to a gas
station.
I was super confident nursing in public during this trip,
however I did discover that Frog Face is not a fan of the nursing cover. Or to be more accurate, he liked it too much
and wanted to play with it instead of actually nursing and kept whipping it
around so that I tended to flash random people in the restaurant. But since I was super confident, I didn’t
really care that much.
During the actual rehearsal and wedding, Goober stayed and
played with grandparents and Frog Face went with his handler (aka the
Weatherman) so that I could focus on wedding stuff and just feed the child when
he got hungry. The little man did
amazing! We received so many comments
about how well behaved he was, and honestly, I was super impressed myself! I am blessed to have such a happy, mellow
little man who would go from place to place, person to person, being rudely
woken up from naps, but would just smile and squeal happily the entire
time. When Goober was little, she would
never have done that well. But the Lord
must have known we needed a break, since Goober is still such a handful!
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| Happily going from one person to another |
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| Aunt Barbie |
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| Auntie A. |
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| Uncle Comp Geek |
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| I got the tiny sliver of bed between the two |
The wedding was amazing, beautiful, and simple. It was also freaking cold. And I chose a spaghetti strap dress and black
dressy sandals. The pictures outside
were especially cold. I am not ashamed
to admit I snuggled next to some random groomsmen who had nice warm suits for
warmth. One of the things I loved most
about the decorations was my bouquet was made of origami flowers. It was so simple, elegant, and original that
I immediately fell in love with it.
However, my cats also love the feathers that are on it. Thankfully I rescued it from their greedy
paws before too much damage was done.
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| Gorgeous origami flowers |
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| The Bride and I |
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| My dates for the night |
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| The bride and groom |
After the wedding when I went to pick up Goober from the
grandparents, she saw my styled hair and dress and asked “Is mommy a
princess?”. My heart melted.
Speaking of styled
hair: It was nice to get my hair all fancy in an updo for the wedding, but I
have been losing hair like crazy lately (another fun side effect of having a
baby) and was afraid that having my hair done and then washing out all the
product afterwards would leave me bald.
I am happy to report I am not bald.
Yet.
I love the Weatherman’s family and truly believe they are
amazing people. But what is up with the
toilet paper? Whenever we stay at his
parent’s house, they always seem to store the toilet paper somewhere strange
like the hall closet. This time we were
staying with his sister and she said “I bought toilet paper but don’t remember
where I put it.” Good thing they had
multiple bathrooms we could steal rolls from.
We did not kill the fish!
I was worried about Goober’s birthday fish while we were gone. We gave
it one of those food things that they can chew off of for a couple days, but we
did turn the air down and it is a tropical fish so I worried about it getting
too cold. Thankfully he was still alive
(a bit sluggish due to cold) and is still swimming!
All in all it was a fast trip, but it could have gone a lot
worse. As I was unpacking all our stuff
the other night after we finally got the kids to bed (getting them back on a
normal schedule has been fun! I felt bad
for their daycare teachers on Monday, although apparently they both took good
naps) I kept asking myself “what’s the point? We are heading back to see family
in just a short 27 days”.
I can’t believe we are doing this again in 27 days.
Now to enjoy my four-day weekend and veg with the kids. We got a free pass to the YMCA that expires
Friday so we might take them swimming one last time. We will also dig out the Christmas
decorations and make our house festive.
And eat a lot.
Happy holidays!
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| Cousin play date! |
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