On Road Trips With Small Children

[dr_pretentious]

A trip that will require six to eight hours in the car is not necessarily impossible to do in one day with a toddler, as long as you are free to make as many stops as you need to, for as long as you need to, playing it by ear based on how your kid is acting.

But if you have, say, a ferry to catch, and it must be the one that leaves the mainland at 6pm, such that you have to press on without stopping, even while your 18-month-old is screaming, begging to nurse, that's something else altogether.

Or if you have, say, a tutoring client scheduled for the evening you get back, it's far better to cancel right up front than to have to press on, even while your 18-month-old is screaming, begging to get a well-deserved break from his car seat.

We ended up missing the ferry we had tickets for and going stand-by later that night, no harm done, so we might as well have made the trip easier on little G in the first place. We ended up getting stuck behind an accident on the way home and having to cancel the student appointment anyway, so...you get the picture.

Poor kid.

So now we know what was probably obvious to everyone else on earth: Don't set out on a long trip with a toddler and a same-day deadline, period. Ever. It turns out four hours is the absolute maximum driving time we can commit to getting through in a day with any prediction about when we'll arrive.

How people with more than one child ever get anywhere is a complete mystery to me.

We actually had a really good time, or rather, several bouts of really good time interspersed over our rainy weekend on Martha's Vineyard. When I've recovered from the ordeal of getting home, it may be possible to write a post about the fun parts.

I had one of the most productive writing sessions in recent months sitting in my car on a dark, cold night of heavy rain, after Dan and Gareth had gone to bed and the hotel lobby was locked up. Sitting in the driver's seat, running down the car battery to keep all the lights on, shivering in all my damp raingear and dripping on the legal pad propped on the steering wheel, I finally figured out how to fill the giant gaping plot hole in the Ria story. It wasn't fun, exactly, but it was a tremendous relief.

Comments

[ingridsummers.livejournal.com]

Your story makes me smile. For the first year of her life, PG-13 HATED going anywhere in the car. We think it was the rear-facing seat. At the time we were regularly visiting friends who live about an hour and 20 minutes from our home. She would scream all the way there and all the way home. There was NOTHING we could do. All that stopped when her seat was reversed.

[karenjunker.livejournal.com]

To get from our place to Iron Springs takes around 3 hours, including the 3-5 stops for bathroom breaks. We can easily leave earlier and leave time for extra breaks.

Be sure to schedule your flight so that you have the two-hour early check-in time allowed, plus the 3+ hours drive from the beach to the airport. We were planning to return home on the 28th, so that means a flight leaving here at 5PM or so. For the flight getting here, I'd love to have you come a day early, but if you must arrive on the 25th, try to get here by noon-1PM.

Don't worry - we'll have fun!

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

That's heartening. Gareth's weight hovered just under 20 pounds for ages, and that's the minimum weight for a front-facing seat. I'm pretty sure he's topped that now. Everybody says it's safest to keep the kid rear-facing for as long as possible, but I think we've hit the no-longer-possible point. The non-stop screaming makes Dan and me less safe drivers.

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

Scheduling extra breaks, or at least one extra-long break for running around, sounds like a really good idea. In our home time zone, we'd also be able to predict his nap cycle pretty well. I'm not sure what the flight and the shift in daylight will do to that.

We'll be arriving in plenty of time. I'll email you our flight info shortly.

So looking forward to being there!

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

Am I right in remembering that your little guy is big for his age? Gareth's pretty small (20th percentile in height and head circumference, and a slightly scary 3rd percentile in weight, at last well-baby visit), so he's still rear-facing. ingridsummers (above) isn't the first person to suggest that things will get way better when we can face the seat forward.

[reynaud.livejournal.com]

How people with more than one child ever get anywhere is a complete mystery to me.

In days of old, I think with lots of sanity loss and threats of violence. Nowadays, I think with DVDs.

Good news about filling in the plot hole!

[jongibbs.livejournal.com]

Road trips with children are easy when you have a roof-rack. When they're inside the car with you, not so much ;)

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

One of our traveling companions proposed that solution, too. We found ourselves referring to it as the Mitt Romney (http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2007/06/29/romney-is-in-petas-doghouse/) method. :)

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

DVDs sound good. For a ten-hour trip to Rochester from DC, I borrowed a portable DVD player, and it did help. But about eight hours into a ten-hour trip, I'm nearly as cranky as a toddler, myself, so it's no surprise that it didn't get us all the way there in good spirits. One of these days, I'll have to get one of those players for keeps.

The mysterious power

[amushink.livejournal.com]

of Jack Flanders. It helped. I don't know why. Even as a toddler, she would listen with rapt attention to ZBS. Probably warped her forever. Of course, those were the days before tiny TV's.

Also, with maneuvering, and stretchy breasts, one can nurse a child while spouse is driving. I was so grateful when they got old enough that I could return to the front seat and talk to the other grownup in the car.

[violet-moon25.livejournal.com]

Some days those of us with more than one child 3 and under do not get out of the house. Other days it takes 2+ hours. Haven't yet sold the 3 year old on the benefits of cooperation (more playground time for him as well as less yelling). Threats of violence are only sometimes effective. Insanity seems to be inevitable.

[davefreer.livejournal.com]

I did years as a research scientist with Barbs as my recorder (you can't write when you're up to the elbow in a shark's stomach contents. Not if you plan to read it afterwards, anyway) and our baby boy in a fish crate (waterproof and lined with a little foam mattress) at her feet. Oddly he liked being in the car, especially if we played music or sang to him (if you've heard a pack of seaguls squabbling over a bin, then you've heard something better than my singing.) He's turned out perfectly normally (for certain values of normal) despite that. It was later both boys got into hating long car journeys - strapped in facing forward. Story tapes (shows my age) and math games got them through that. Start math games - adding up numberplates, and then coming up with a defined number that the numberplate should add, subtract, divide or multiply to as soon as possible. It will terrify their peers and stand them in good stead for life. :-)

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

you can't write when you're up to the elbow in a shark's stomach contents

And I thought I had impediments to writing!

It sounds like the certain values of normal you fostered are about the same values of normal I'm aiming for. My husband remembers math games like those from the car trips of his childhood. I could never read in a moving car, so I'd spend the hours staring out the window and making up stories using whatever we drove past.