Traveling with kids is a nightmare.
Don’t even get me started on the hours and hours of packing.
Let’s just talk about the actual traveling portion of the event.
I’m the kind of person who will have to pee for 2 hours before I’ll stop just because I wanna “make good time.” I’ll pack a sandwich so I don’t have to swing through Wendy’s. I’ve even been known to switch out the kid’s dvd in the backseat with one hand while steering with the other to avoid having to pull over. Double-jointed elbows help.
There was a period when Asher was a baby where it took us forever to travel home to visit our folks, stopping to breastfeed every 3 hours, stopping to mop up the former contents of his stomach from the entire backseat of the car and so on.
As he got older, things got better. He was perfectly happy to soak through his diaper while watching Toy Story 1, 2 and 3 back to back with strawberry juice dripping down his chin.
Then we hit the potty training phase and backwards we went.
The first time we tried to let him travel to my in-laws without a diaper, I was foolish enough to fill up an entire 12-ounce cup with juice and hand it to him at the beginning of the 5 1/2 hour trip.
Silly first-time mom.
Ten minutes later, I glanced back to see an empty cup. The worst part is that I didn’t even think about it.
We stopped to go to the bathroom about an hour and a half into our road trip and Asher insisted he didn’t need to go.
In a hurry and in no mood to go through the drama of dragging a potty-resistant kid to the bathroom, I let it go.
Within five minutes, he said, “I pee-peed.”
We pulled over, grabbed his change of clothes, took him to the bathroom (why?), put paper towels down on his car seat and hit the road.
About an hour later, he said, “I gotta go potty!”
We got off the interstate, Gabe grabbed him out of his seat and ran into the gas station and he started peeing in the middle of the store.
Gabe was so embarrassed, he just turned him around and walked him back out to the car. We dug out his suitcase, changed him again and headed back out.
And btw, let me offer my sincere apology for the toddler pee you stepped in at the Greenville, Alabama BP station that 4th of July weekend.
What I can’t figure out is why we didn’t think to put a diaper on him at this point.
But we didn’t.
Sometime later, on a backwoods road so dark you could hardly see the person next to you in the car, yet again, Asher said, “I gotta go potty!”
We pulled the car over on the side of the road (cue tires screeching), literally into someone’s front yard. Gabe grabbed the little potty out of the back of the car and put it on the ground, I grabbed Asher from his car seat and started yanking his pants down and…he peed all over himself and me.
Yep. That’s 3 accidents in one 5 1/2 hour trip.
Rookie parents.
These days, Ash is a big boy and has the potty thing down but now we have a baby to complicate things again.
And instead of pulling over to give him a bottle, we pull over to pour milk down his feeding tube.
This is the sight that confounds people who happen to be at the same gas station as us at that time.
The baby’s in his car seat and that’s me trying to get the tube holding the milk up high enough so gravity can do its trick. Takes a good 20 minutes at least.
Sometimes we have to trade out holding it because our arms get tired.
Makes you kinda wanna just stay home all the time, doesn’t it?
But then we’d miss out on wonderful Thanksgiving memories like these.
I guess that’s why the good memories always outlast the bad.
Hope I can forget by Christmas.
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Loved all the pictures and so true about the good memories outlasting the bad. I will say this it looks like you have a wonderful Thanksgiving and that is what is most important, but can relate to the whole potty issue with two small kids. Sp not fun traveling when they are first learning and have been there and done that.
It’s depressing the amount of pee and poop I clean up with 2 children and 2 dogs. Just the life I always envisioned for myself.
Very rarely do I laugh out loud, but the peeing in the gas station did it. Thanks for that. 🙂
At least something positive came out of it. Imagine all the times you’ve slipped in something wet in a gas station and wondered “what the hell?” Now you know.
Great post! I am the mom who slaps a pull-up on anytime there is an outing and a chance of peed up clothes or a car, which means that I extended diaper use by about 6 months. Great photos and glimpses into your weekend.
That was me too. I finally had to kick the habit seeing as mine was going on 4. Oh well….
I can so relate to everything in this post except one thing… the potty seat?! I can’t believe you brought a potty with you in the car. When my potty training (and let’s be honest, my fully potty trained) boys have to pee, I just let them pee on the ground. Grass, alley, parking lot, whatever…. I don’t even feel awkward or embarassed about it…. I thought everyone did that with little guys.
Oh he LOVES to pee on trees now but then he was just barely going in the potty and he was incredibly particular about it. He would only go in HIS frog potty. Gotta do what ya gotta do. Although as you can see, it didn’t exactly work for me.
I am SO not looking forward to toilet training. Keep in mind I have a girl, so I’ll have to contend with the whole “DON’T SIT ON THE TOILET SEAT!” fear. Ugh.
A friend taught me a trick that I’m going to use with my child – put underwear on them and then a pull-up over top. This lets them sense when they are wet, but avoids the hellish mess it leaves behind.
I obviously am not at this stage yet, so maybe this is bad advice?
Kudos to you for traveling that far with your children. We did one road trip in April, and it took FIVE weeks for my daughter to start napping again when we got home. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to do it again. 😉
Smart trick! I’ll try that with the 2nd one. Just can’t wait to potty train again. It only took 2 years with the first one so…should be a breeze.
Oh, traveling with littles is the pit in your cherries. When our 3rd was 10 weeks old, we made a 13 hour car trip to North Carolina. We had one still in diapers and 1 potty training. I have blacked that memory out. Like childbirth, I remember it being painful, but, the details are fuzzy. Here’s to your subconscious doing its best to prepare you for Christmas travel. On the flip side, the pictures/memories are worth it.
13 hours is beyond a nightmare. I hope you drank an entire bottle of wine when you got there because you deserved it!
Sounds like a ton of fun. Great story – loved the ending.
Does your baby always dress so formal for the holidays?
He does. He’s fancy like that.
Ugh, ugh, ugh! I loathe traveling with kids. Enough to make you hole up at home indeed. Definitely hoping for amnesia by the time Christmas arrives!
Honestly, I’m still shell-shocked. It’s gonna take a lot of whiskey in my eggnog to get me to do it again for Christmas.
You look like a pro standing there with your arm up. You can tell you’ve done that a time or two. Loved the gas station story. It cracked me up! Thanks for linking up with us over at “Finding the Funny”!