Greg and I haven’t been on vacation since, well, I can’t remember when. We briefly talked about taking the girls to the beach back in September, but it quickly became obvious that we were crazy. Luckily, my parents offered to rent a house and have both us and Greg’s parents at the beach in Surf City, North Carolina for the week of Thanksgiving.
We contemplated taking 2 cars to deal with all of the baby paraphernalia. We ended up buying a soft-top car carrier (which Greg refers to as The Wart), and managed to take 3 pack-n-plays, 3 high chairs, the 8-panel baby gate, and all of the stuff associated with being away from home.
The girls did really well for about the first 2 hours of the 5+ hour trip. With Becca screaming enough to wake Emma up, we finally decided to stop about 2.5 hours in at a McDonalds in the middle of nowhere for bottles. We had given the girls some teething biscuits for lunch on the road, knowing full well that they’d make a mess. Once we stopped, we saw that Becca proved us right.
The girls just don’t eat very well on the road right now. We can’t really get their bottles warm enough with the portable bottle warmers we have, and they are in “information overload” mode whenever we go somewhere new; the want to look EVERYWHERE at the same time, and want to focus on everything but their bottles. Becca did well, but Emma was staring at the woman behind Greg the entire time, and Julie was focusing on the flags out in front of the McDonalds.
Things went downhill from there. The next half hour was ok, but then Emma started fussing. She yelled for a while before falling asleep. It literally couldn’t have been more than a minute later that Becca started. And then Julie. Becca and Julie alternated SCREAMING for the last 2 hours of the trip. I mean, we really can’t blame them – it was a long time to be in the car, and there really wasn’t anywhere for them to get out and stretch and play for a while to try to break up the trip. But it was just agonizing to listen to. We just wanted to get here.
Incidentally, along the way, we sent a text message to my mom, letting her know where we were, and that we weren’t calling because, really, when the girls are screaming, you can’t hear anything on the phone. We got a call about an hour later, checking on us again, and I swear, that phone call was the only minute of peace we got on the second half of the trip. I think the grandparents didn’t believe us that they were so cranky. But those girls are no dummies - - they know where Christmas presents come from. Santa Claus and grandparents.
More later. I've got 8.8 GB of photos and video to get through, plus a house to put back together.
4 comments:
Oh, my, Sarah! I'm hoping the trip back home went a little bit better. Hugs for you, friend!
Mmm .... sounds a little like trips with my kids at age 10 (OK we don't give them bottles, and they are arguing not screaming!). Hope the trip was wonderful, despite the journey!
I hope the trip was wonderful and can't wait to see some pics when you have time..
Car trips are NOT fun and I can't imagine doing it with 3 little ones..you and Greg are very brave!!haah
ummm I can't imagine 3 in the car! We've done NJ to SC plenty of times with one in the car. Here's a tip we found worked well (it's not fun for the person driving) get up in the middle of the night and carry the sleeping child/children out to the car and start driving (they'd sleep until about 6ish). We usually found that we could get to the VA/NC border by about 7:30-8am...then we could change out of PJ's(the kids) and have breakfast before setting out on the road again. Then we'd only have another 4-5hour ride.
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