Vacation 2010, Part One

We left the hoop.

So after we partied, I packed. And packed. And packed.

Because traveling over 800 miles with two little kids requires a lot of stuff. And a lot of stuff requires a lot of... well... packing.

On Thursday night, Bill kept saying things like, "We're going to be in the car by 6 am" and "I'm setting the alarm for 5:30 am" and "If we can get an early start, we'll miss all that traffic." It sounded good on paper, but it should be noted that he was on the couch watching tv and I was in the next room, still packing. We did manage to make it to bed by midnight and five and a half hours of sleep seemed pretty reasonable. I've done far more with far less and I was on board with the early wake-up call.

Then at about 12:20 or so, Liam woke up crying. So I went in, rubbed his back, stayed a few minutes-- hung over the crib and then dropped to my knees and crawled out of the room. (This is the routine. Don't judge. It works.) And then, at about 1 am, he woke again. And then again, at about 1:45 am. Finally, at some point after two, I surrendered to the couch with my boy and his blanket and his stuffed Wubbzy. He was still waking up every so often, but getting him back to sleep here required less of a "routine".

We ended up pulling out of the driveway at 7:58 am. Which, considering the sleep issues, was an accomplishment.

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Why me?! Why me?!

During last year's road trip, Liam got a horrible virus. We were driving to Florida and somewhere around Virgina, he developed a really high fever and some serious diarrhea*. He was miserable and inconsolable. We spent some time in an ER in Savannah. Fluke thing, right?

Here we are, one year later, and it turns out that Liam is cutting his molars. Leading up to the trip, he was having trouble sleeping, he was drooling and he had the worst runny nose ever. His fingers were perpetually in the back of his mouth and he just didn't seem himself. The molars really didn't occur to me until Friday morning, as we were on our way. Liam was chewing on a munchkin and he screamed out in pain and started crying.

He wasn't able to eat much on the trip, but that didn't stop him from trying. He'd cry and beg for food, put it in his mouth, and then two seconds later he'd be screaming from the pain. This happened over and over and over. This kid's got the memory of a goldfish, I swear. We tried getting foods that were soft and dosing him regularly with recalled Motrin and Tylenol. In a point of desperation, we even stopped off at a pharmacy in Virginia for some Anbesol. In a two-on-one wrestling match, we ended up numbing his entire mouth in an effort to get to the molars. And, from the pitch of the screams, it turns out that feeling your entire mouth go numb might actually be more traumatic than the pain of teething. Go figure.

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Road Trip!!! Woo-hoo!!!

So throughout the 800-mile trip, I kept saying things aloud like: "Hey, this isn't so bad.", "Liam is doing pretty well considering." and "This isn't like we planned, but I'm still having fun." Part of my optimism was an effort to keep Bill's spirits up, but in all seriousness, it was good.

Regardless of the challenges involved with two kids and such a long trip, I love road trips. The conversations, the lack of distractions, the music, the scenery, the time spent as a family. Love, love, love, love, love.

So yes, Liam cried a lot and only slept a little. And yes, there was so much traffic that Virginia took twice as long as it should have. And yes, I practically overdosed on coffee and smelly rest stops, but all in all, it was good.

We played games like "I Spy" and "20 Questions". We uploaded silly trivia quizzes on my phone. We took turns telling our favorite movie, foods, etc. We told stories and silly jokes. We jumped on the beds, swam in the pool and made a scene at the free breakfast bar at the Super 8 hotel in Smithfield, North Carolina.

The super-long road trip has been a staple in our summer plans for the last nine years and I don't see that changing anytime soon.

* I've been a mom for five years and I'm still spell-checking the word diarrhea. WTH.