2100 miles in a Suburban with a dog, a 20 month old and my husband

We finished our big road trip from the Midwest to the Pacific North West. It went about how I thought it would go. The dog panted the first day of the trip. The baby rarely slept (I know… usually babies love to sleep in cars, right?). Baby C is always afraid he’ll miss something consequently he’s a crappy napper. Day 2 of our trip C was crabby… majorly crabby and wouldn’t sleep in the hotel. We were wrecked. The next day the hubs and I traded off driving while the other slept. That was the day we drove 800 miles. While we were in some tiny little one horse town my hubby noticed C had 2 crusty ears. With his tubes, the crusty ears meant an ear infection. Great. Just what we needed. Fortunately, I had ear drops and baby Tylenol with us. Unfortunately, baby C was still a major crab.

I learned a few things during the trip, one of them being that I would have lived (and so would the dog) if we would have had to drug the dog to take her on a plane. My poor dog has doggy cancer and only has 2 years to live. I feed her whatever she wants, whenever she wants. She’s on way out… why not? I just couldn’t bring myself to drug her and put her in the cargo hold of the plane.

But then how was being cooped up in a saburban for 4 days with my son throwing toys (and misc goldfish) at her any better?

I would like for all 2 of you reading this now to benefit from the wisdom of this hellacious trip. Here you go…. My tips for long road trips with a 2 year old.

(a) pack toys or a movie player (if it will keep their attention).

(b) pack snacks – even if they only eat half, it keeps them occupied

(c) overnight diapers are the best. If they’re sleeping you really don’t want to wake them. Baby C pees a lot (what can I say he’s well hydrated, right?) and when we’d press on and wouldn’t change him every few hours, he’d leak. I just started using the overnight diapers so that we wouldn’t have to worry about that.

(d) Pack your patience

(e) Stop often

I would like to point out that the last point also includes stopping for a sanity break. For some reason my child is more well behaved around others than me. Am I alone here? Who knows. What I do know is that if he’s really acting up I just need to take him on an errand and he’s a saint.

We had a few hours until we reached Seattle and I could not handle Baby C moaning in my ear anymore. It felt like he screaming at the back of my head… and well, in fact he was, but he didn’t really do so intentionally. I saw a sign for a winery and insisted that my husband pull over. Keep in mind, I hadn’t showered in 2 days, I was crabby, wearing the same clothes that I had the day before and had not a stich of makeup on. The good Samaritan at the winery let us come in, even with the baby, but I’m sure she could tell that I need a drink… big time.

My wonderful husband let me do the tasting and walked Baby C around the property. After only 30 minutes I started to feel like a new person again. Note to self: drinking in the middle of the day for sanity purposes is ok. Happy Trails.