We really haven't travelled since we moved back to Wisconsin. We've done a few 4 hour trips to pick up my step-daughter at the halfway point... and those short trips generally turned out to be pretty crazy with the two little ones. It seemed like they were either having simultaneous breakdowns or they were taking turns, neither was more appealing really... so I have not been anxious to do any travelling back to visit family in Iowa. I feel bad of course, but travelling with two little children can be a slightly traumatic experience (never mind the hassle of getting ready to travel with two small children: all the diapers, bottles, extra clothes, and all that goes along with the children, and then the boarding of the dogs, or travelling with dogs and children... etc).
We just took a 9 1/2 hour road trip. And guess what? No breakdowns. Well, I think I may have had one or two ;) but none from the two little kids!
Wanna know the secret? We purchased the best thing in the world for road trips: a portable DVD player!!! Seriously, if you travel with small children, it is completely worth the investment. And I think we got ours for under $100. I'll never go on a road trip longer than an hour without it! Its my hero :)
The only travelling issue we had was around dinner time... we ended up getting into Illinois around Rockford right around 5pm - decided that we would get past Rockford before getting dinner... guess what? Not a damn restaurant for 2 hours!! Nope. All through the suburbs of Chicago on 290: no restaurants, no gas stations... we had to wait until we got onto I80! That was about the most miserable 2 hours ever. The kids were hungry around 5. Luckily they didn't get anywhere near full meltdown mode, but they were out of sorts and a little fussy until they got some food. So there's a hint for you, if you are about to get onto 290 around dinner time, stop before you get there and get something to eat!
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Travelling...
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3 comments:
We haven't done many trips beyond an hour for fear of the flip-out, but we will be taking our first vacation with our boy in September, which includes a 3 hour or more drive. We almost thought about going down south to San Diego, which would be an 8 or 9 or longer hour drive, but I chickened out. Kudos to you and your innovative purchase! I'll have to keep that in mind as Mateo gets older... :P
Portable dvd players are the best invention ever!!!! Right up there with the nintendo ds! I wonder if it was a mom who really had the idea of them first!
Yep they are truly magical. We did a 13 hour trip to my sister's in Canada and I couldn't have even begun to imagine how much worse it would have been without that.
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