We got out the new carseat for our trip to Alabama. It's a forward and rear facing carseat that we could have used from the beginning but like most people, we preferred the ease of the carseat you can carry around. But, in my great wisdom, I thought lil C would prefer the big comfortable carseat in a 10 hour drive than the uncomfortable carryable carseat. I couldn't have been more wrong. Trip started around 6:00 AM on a Sunday morning. My mom, Mike, Cason and I were all in one car with everything we owned. We were excited to begin our fun car drive of singing and sightseeing and playing with the baby. The sweet smiley face lasted about an hour. Then there was sleeping for about another hour. Hey, this wasn't too bad. No sweat. We were making good time and our biggest problem was locating a Starbucks on the highway in East Texas. They are hard to find there.
After nap #1 it started. The crying. Crying and screaming. Back to crying. We took turns attempting to entertain him. We rotated seats during the 15 stops we had on our journey. We stopped to eat, to let him eat, to get around and walk around, to go to the bathroom, or just to get out of the car and scream ourselves. Without fail, the minute we lifted him out of the carseat a big smile and it was as if nothing was wrong. Back in the carseat, back to screaming.
Our 10 hour car drive took over 13 hours. It was horrible. I can't sugar coat it. Nothing about it was fun. My mom was regretting inviting us on the trip and I was wishing I could be in the dentists office getting a root canal or something else more fun.
We tried all kinds of things to stop the crying. We tried singing- itsy bitsy spider was sung by the whole car, in 3 part harmony, as a round, for an hour. That worked a bit. Tapping on the sunroof worked too. Why? Don't know. He liked to stare out the sunroof but only if someone was tapping on it. Your arm gets tired tapping on a sunroof. One thing that worked quite well was opening the window by him. Flying down the highway at 70 miles per hour with a window open. VERY loud, VERY much didn't care because he was quiet and happy.
Eventually we arrived at the house after the sun had gone down. So much for an evening stroll on the beach. The house was beautiful but we didn't care at that point. We could have been staying in a cardboard box on the beach and we would have been happy as long as we were out of the car.
We spent the next day looking for flights home.
The next day 2 tiny white teeth push through. Could that have caused all the crying? Surely not 10 hours of crying. We will never know.
All that to say it didn't take me long to realize that traveling with a baby is much different than I could have imagined.
More to come.
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