Travelling again

Well, I went AWOL again :) My husband had a work meeting an hour or so away from our house up north, so we all went up again under the premise of getting some things done at the old house.

I think we've finally found a groove in travelling. The key is leaving early in the am. It's a 7-9 hour drive including all the stops we have to make. It always seems to get completely crazy around dinner time, or dusk. So we decided that the earlier we left the better - and it worked! Of course there were still minor meltdowns and minor fuss fests, but nothing like the 40 minute scream fests we had on our last trip up north.

We got invited out to eat with our old neighbors. And we had a great time! It was amazing. 6 kids between us, and all of them behaved very well. I had tried all afternoon to get D to nap so he wasn't cranky for dinner, but he just wasn't going to nap. But that worked even better - he crashed out the second he hit the carseat and slept for the 25min drive to the restaurant, then was sleepy and dazed for dinner. He actually ate something, didn't spit anything out, and didn't throw anything until the very end. Baby B was great too! And I actually got to eat! And we had good conversation. It just turned out amazingly well.

Baby B had her first visit to Lake Superior! We went up Thursday to pick Dad up from his meeting and played at one of the playgrounds there while Dad had a conference call.

Baby B started pulling herself up on Mother's Day! And she just finally took her first crawl steps yesterday! She's an expert scooter though.

Ahhh. Back from Travelling

Ever travelled over 400 miles with an infant, toddler, 10 year old, husband and wiener dog? It's not the most desirable thing in the world.

One hour into our trip 2 things happened. The baby pooped all the way through her clothes. Luckily I was nursing her at the time, so no spoilage on the car seat. And thankfully I had packed an extra outfit in the easily reachable diaper bag (but only one, so I was really hoping it wouldn't happen again!)

The second thing was that it started snowing big time. We knew that they were predicting snow, so we were prepared to drive the distance in snow. We just thought that most of the snow would be somewhere in the middle of our trip. It lasted from the first hour until the last hour. So we had 2 hours (of an 8 hour drive) of snow free driving.

Very shortly after our first stop (an hour into the trip) the baby had a meltdown and I ended up having to climb in back and sit between the two car seats for the rest of the trip. That was so not comfortable. But every time things seemed to be under control and I would think about going back up front, things would start to get hairy again.

I don't know which is worse. Dueling meltdowns or when they take turns having meltdowns...

At least on the drive home I was able to sit in the front seat for the first three hours! :) But it always seems to take much longer to get home...more breakdowns (of course you don't want to say "breakdowns" or "blowouts" when talking about a road trip... I made the mistake of telling my mother that we had a couple of "blowouts" on our drive last time - of course she assumed I meant tires, when really I was talking about poop-throughs!).

I don't know if it's better to stop more or less often. They definately need a break from the car seat every now and then, but then they never want to get back in and you think it would have been better not to stop... we try to only stop a couple of times...

Now comes the part I really hate: coming home to a house in need of a cleaning :( the kitchen fairies did not come while we were gone... here it is 2 days later and I still haven't done the dishes or laundry, or unpacked... and it smells like something crawled into the fridge while we were gone and died. It probably doesn't help that I have some serious leftovers in there! Ugh. I guess that's what I'll start with, as I just don't want to open the fridge again...
More about the travels later...