We just recently got back from a trip out to Utah. We drove out. Yep 20 (+) hours with a toddler and a nearly 5 month old in the car through the absolute most boring section of the entire United States (maybe Western Texas would tie).
We headed out the morning of July 29th, a Thursday. This was after all week scrambling to get our patio completed (pictures to come), Stephen buying a trailer for the Scouts and all the other preparation that comes with a 2 day car ride. The house never got cleaned but we did manage to leave around 8am. We stopped around noon for lunch at a rest stop right outside of Des Moines. Samantha didn’t eat much lunch but she made a great impression of the Little Mermaid on a rock, and Clara was just cute and not fed up with her car seat yet.
We made it to our hotel in Nebraska with enough time to go swimming, order pizza and then the girls crashed at 8pm. Clara actually started a nice trick of falling asleep almost immediately after being swaddled with a pacifier in her mouth and then put on her tummy. She continued this trick the entire vacation. (Hooray for no more bouncing and rocking and patting!) Unfortunately, her trick did not keep her asleep all night since even though she was tired, she was congested and couldn’t breathe. So I was up every 2 hours with her.
The second day of driving was a bit harder. We finally broke out the itouch for Samantha to watch movies and play games as she was done with coloring, stickers, dolls and magnets. I guess she thought it was too bright in the car to watch a movie because she decided that it was a great idea to put a THICK fleece blanket over top of her as the sun was beaming into the car (and it was around 90° outside).
In general, Clara did very well. However, she doesn’t take naps in her car seat, she may crash for 15 minutes but then is up once again. This probably has something to do with the fact that she sleeps on her stomach. Plus, she was SO close to sitting she really didn’t want to be reclined. We ended up laying our front seat down flush with the backseat so that whoever wasn’t driving could entertain Clara. Here’s one of the drivers… and one of the last pictures of his sunglasses.
Friday night we stayed at Stephen’s brother’s house out in Eagle Mountain. By the time we got off I-80 and onto I-15 Clara had had it. Stephen asked me if I was sure I was okay with driving because he would happily take back over, and I declined. Besides if Clara saw me she’d think she could nurse or something and would have been even worse. But we made it to Eagle Mountain and Clara was happy once the first click to undue her car seat were heard. Samantha got to re-meet her cousin Mia (9 months younger) and they hit it off well. Actually, Samantha wouldn’t go to sleep until Mia was in her crib. She was very concerned about it.
The end of the first of quite a few posts (that may or may not be in order) as I wait for pictures from other people’s cameras.
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