Our fun family we visited!I ventured the impossible and made it possible. I took a 13-hour (pshah! more like 19!) car trip with the kids, sans husband. The trip took us two days of driving each way. Yes, as many people wondered, I probably was taking crazy pills. But you know what? We did it. And we survived. And we had a lot of fun.
I'd actually been planning this trip in my head for a year- way back when I was pregnant with Mira and Sean's sis-in-law Jeana told me that their family would be moving to So-Cal and would be up for a visit. I had only two words in my head: Road Trip!
The kids enjoying a brief pit stop.Granted my husband had reason to be nervous. I do have a history of falling asleep a lot in the car. Once I couldn't even make a two hour car trip without pulling over to rest- in broad daylight. But this was 10 years ago, and I was well prepared to douse any amounts of caffeine if that's what it came to. Well, believe or not, I had super stay-awake-and-alert powers the whole time I was on the road, day or night. I only drank, like, one diet dr. pepper. I had major adrenaline to just go, go, go. (I won't go into detail at how it took me days to recover from the missed sleep and adrenaline charges.)
And the kids did really good too- thanks to some lifesaving gadgets called: "DVDs." My friend Jen lent me her car player and it definitely made life much more pleasant in the car when Calvin wasn't sleeping- which he didn't do much of. I was just planning on sticking it out- but am so glad I didn't. During our travels, he averaged about 2 movies/day and I had no problem with it whatsoever, because there was no screaming, crying or thrashing in the car seat. Mira did really good too. She slept a lot, would sometimes play with toy or two or watch a little Baby Einstein on the screen I put in front of her seat. Poor thing got a little post-traumatic stress afterwards though: every time I put her in the car seat she would cry thinking she'd be stuck there for another 4 hours. It took us over a week of being home to convince her our car trips had gotten much shorter again.
I also packed a lot of snacks: basically anything that wouldn't leave crumbs everywhere. Lots of pretzels, some animal crackers, Gerber fruit snacks, yogurt covered raisins, even gummy bears. One day when I was desperate, I kept feeding Calvin as many snacks (read- junk) as he wanted. He was so thrilled at the time but then complained that his tummy hurt for the next 36 hours. I was much more strict after that.
Abbie (5) was in charge of holding Calvin's hand going places so this was a common scene.
So what did we do? Once we got down the LA area, we did the Mom-thing but together instead of 1,000 miles apart. We schlepped our kids to playgrounds everyday (and basked in the warm California sun!), we went to the beach once and the harbor once, we bought and watched Twilight- including all of the deleted scenes and directors takes, we went to the Santa Barbara zoo- one of the best zoos I've ever been too! (more on that later), we let the cousins play together and if you're my family- we finished one cold and started a new one while we were there- must've been the stress of traveling or new germs or something. We saw lots of celery and strawberry fields while we were down there- yum. And did I mention bask in the sun?
Sliding down the grassy turf hill.
Let me tell you about the Santa Barbara Zoo- it is all about selectivity and manageability. It is not the biggest zoo I have been too, nor does it have the most animals. But it was the first zoo I've been to that I wasn't totally exhausted at the end -AND- I felt like I had gotten my money's worth. One of the coolest parts was the play area in the center of the whole zoo. It had a slippery turf hill that we had a blast sliding down. Across the way it had lots of grassy areas that you could sit and have a picnic- which we did, just uphill from the cool cactus garden. Another cool thing was it not only had cool animals, but cool plants too. I enjoyed the foilage, no- foliage, dang! There were some people there with serious, professional, long-lens cameras just to take pictures of the plants, like this spindly number. There were no zebras or a huge array of monkeys, but there were flamingos, a lion and lots of cool birds (sorry Lindsay). There were only two downers to our otherwise sunny day- 1. We didn't get to ride the cool train around the zoo due to a scheduling conflict -and- 2. I felt really bad for the sad gorilla who was all alone and sad. However, I highly recommend this zoo. If you are ever in the Santa Barbara area- Go! Plus it is right next to the ocean- what's not to love about that?
The last thing I will comment about in Part I of our trip log is the Many Milestones that Mira Met in our new environment. Its like she grew at hyper-speed. Within a few days of arriving to So-Cal, Mira:
1. Cut her first two teeth
2. Started sitting up on her own
3. Started eating solids
My widdle girl is getting so big!
Mira chillin with the cacti.
Johnny loved baby Mira!
Part II will come later!
