This past weekend, we traveled about 500 miles to visit my sister and her family. Although we were beyond excited to see them, I was completely dreading the drive. Leah does not do well in the car. She can handle our 10 minute drives to Target (usually) but 8 hours? I am not good in the car, so I can totally empathize with her. Leah only took a catnap the afternoon of our drive and silly me, I thought that would work in our favor. Well, 4.5 hours later, she was still up!! I have to give her some credit- she did remarkably well considering our drive. The drive down to Fayetteville, NC is normally 8 hours (with just one quick bathroom and food stop). Now, we haven't done this drive since she was born, so we expected it would take a bit longer. What we experienced, however, was nothing we would have ever expected. The drive took us 12 hours (and no, that wasn't because we stopped so many times). Apparently everyone in the NE was driving south for spring break! Both my husband and I were ready to lose it...so you can only imagine how a 19 month old would be reacting. Before you start thinking we are crazy, I will tell you that we broke our drive up. We had initially planned to do half the drive on Friday, spend the night at a hotel and then finish the other half on Saturday. Although mileage-wise this is close to what we did, time-wise it was more like 7.5 hours on Friday night and 5 hours on Saturday.
I will proudly admit that we completed this trip without a DVD player. We thought about going to purchase a portable DVD player for this trip, but then I started thinking that she would expect the TV every time we go in the car. So, we opted to not get one and instead, I packed 2 bags with "Leah distractions." One bag was filled with snacks and 3 different drink choices (since we're still in a diaper I didn't care how much she drank). We had also purchased soft pretzels before our drive (for us of course) but shortly after we hit our first area of congestion, we realized that the soft pretzel easily bought us 30 minutes of peace (and we repeated this twice Friday night). I will admit...I broke down at one point and gave her Dove Chocolate (the little square chocolates). I broke it into pieces and gave her one little piece at a time...again, bought myself a few minutes of quiet - although, I'm not entirely sure the peace was worth the mess I had to clean up!
Musical toys, books, leapfrog cellphone, and other toys with lots of buttons were also lifesavers on this trip. I had packed several (if not an excessive amount) of toys. Although I had almost no room to stretch out my feet, it was worth having all those toys with me. We spent time singing songs, playing peek-a-boo and searching for the moon! Of course, we stopped a few times to let Leah stretch her legs and get out some energy. Cracker Barrel was a great place to stop because she could play with some of the toys in the store (not sure you are supposed to but lots of kids were) and she also rocked on the rocking chairs. Chick-fil-A is another great place to stop at because the children have a nice little play area and the food, albeit fast food, is not the worst for you to eat!
Thankfully, our ride home was MUCH better. We ended up cutting our trip a bit short because we wanted to leave at a time that we thought would be best for Leah. It actually worked! Although I still needed many forms of entertainment for my sweet little girl, it was a much shorter drive!
I am not anxious to make another long car trip anytime soon but I do feel good about finally doing this with Leah. My advice for other moms who are planning long car rides with little ones:
- Pack a large variety of snacks- soft pretzels are great if your child is old enough! Pack something your child loves but hasn't had in a while! We did this with fruity cheerios and it was a HUGE hit! To eliminate some mess, use Munchkin Snack Catcher cups.
- Bring along lots of small, musical and interactive toys. Magna doodle is a great toy to keep kids occupied for a while! Another idea- buy a small toy and give it to your child in the car. The novelty of a new toy will be worth it! We found a toy in our closet (LeapFrog Learning Friend Lily) that Leah had never played with. She loved it!!
- Prepare yourself for reaching and stretching your arm farther than you thought it would go in order to find dropped snack cups & toys!
- Plan on stopping every 2 hours or so. We did not get to do this, due to traffic etc., but I would highly recommend a stretch after about 2 hours. Yes, it will add on travel time but it's well worth it! If you see a Cracker Barrel or Chick-fil-A, go there (but remember Chick-fil-A is closed on Sundays and Cracker Barrel gets really crowded at peak breakfast times).
- You can easily entertain your child with songs (could be a CD or just your voice) and "Where is" games (where is your nose?)
- Take lots of deep breaths and enjoy the cute moments while in the car. I'm not going to sugarcoat it- driving a long distance with a child is not fun! However, there were several times that Leah was being funny and when John and I just focused on how stinkin' cute and silly she was being, we temporarily forgot about the drive.
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