In about a week, the family Boyd is heading up to “Cedar Campus”:http://cedarcampus.com/ for the 2007 InterVarsity “Faculty Conference”:http://facultyconference.org/. We can’t wait to explore this beautiful retreat center with Lucy for the first time, except for one thing: we are a little nervous about the eight-hour drive north.
p{color:gray}. Photo: Cedar Campus’s “Old Mill Point” site in the morning mist, August 27, 2004.
Lucy has taken a couple of “road”:/news/2006/have-baby-will-travel/ “trips”:/news/2007/the-lucy-files-january-12/ with us before and done quite well. But that was several months ago (before mobility really set in) — and the car trips were only about three hours long.
If Lucy were three or four years old, I think I’d have a lot more ideas of ways to entertain her: we could listen to books on tape, sing songs, play look-out-the-window games, or make up stories together. But I’m not quite sure how to entertain a pre-verbal toddler strapped into her car seat. Is it possible? Here are some of the specific questions we have:
* Is it better to plan frequent stops for fun, or should we just try to plow through for as long as possible before taking a break?
* Lucy’s pre-walking status makes me wonder where we can stop for a crawl-break. I can try to put my “germophobia”:/news/2007/germophobe/ aside for a bit, but I really don’t think she should be crawling around on the floor of a Wal-Mart. Any alternate ideas?
* Now that Lucy is a forward-facing rider, we lack appropriate car toys — all of the ones we used to have hung on the bar of her infant seat. Any tips?
* We are willing to put aside our pride (if not sanity) and listen to some kids music, if necessary. Any specific road-trip music recommendations for a 13-month-old, or will she be just as happy listening to the Grateful Dead?
* I’m planning to bring along plenty of “Cheerios”:/news/2007/the-lucy-files-may-25-2007/. What are some other good (and suitably tidy) car snacks for a seven-toothed baby?
* The last time we road-tripped with Lucy, we were “still”:/news/2007/the-marker/ “swaddling”:/news/2006/baby-houdini/ “her”:/news/2006/luv-2-b-swaddled/ for “naps”:/news/2006/happy-napper/, which made for a good enough “sleep cue,” even when we were in the car. Now that she’s a “free-range hen”:/news/2007/farewell-o-swaddle/, are there ways that we should help Lucy take her twice-daily snoozes, or should we bail on planning them and just feel thankful if she sleeps spontaneously?
Those are the first questions I have off the top of my head. Once we get there, I think I’ll feel quite comfortable; we reserved a cabin with two bedrooms (so Lucy can have her own digs), which will make our stay a lot more like home. But if you have tips about the _getting there_ and _settling in_ parts, send them along! We’ll need all the help we can get.
Oh, good luck. We attempted two vacations with Abi when she was 9 months old and 21 months old. We cut them short because they bombed. But never fear, I’m sure you’ll have more luck than we did. Some ideas that did work for us: borrowing toys and books from other families to keep her from getting bored as well as bringing a few favorites, listening to the WEE SING series in the car, wrapping up some toys like mini-presents to be opened at hour intervals, introducing something new (like playdough), stopping at McDonald playlands or reststops with a field or picnic area. Some families borrow a portable DVD player to entertain the littles. Once you’re up there, it should be fine, but you’re right, the ride could be challenging. I would drive like mad until you absolutely have to stop. Let us know how it goes.
When traveling with small children, you really have to put aside the notion that it takes X hours to get somewhere and just think of it as a meandering journey…. or at least that helps me!
Chris, Ben & I leave REALLY early in the morning (like 5-6 am) — Ben normally falls asleep in the car for the first leg of the journey that way. We stop when we have to (i.e., screaming/fussy baby) and try to find a McDonald’s playland. You could try to find a beach and let Lucy crawl around in the sand or a rest area.
Snack ideas — Ben loved those Gerber Puff things. He also likes their wagon wheels. Fig Newtons were also popular before he had more teeth. Grapes (cut in half) & strawberries would also be good.
When Ben gets cranky, singing really helps, the Wee Sing collection is great or just singing nursery rhymes that you know works too. I also keep a large bag of toys up front and keep handing them to him when he gets bored. This works sometimes — maybe get her a few special new toys to take that she can only play with in the car?
I hope it goes well! Traveling can be hard, but you’ll make it!
definitely frequent stops. Plowing through works for up to 3 hours and then you pay for it, big time, for the remaining time – or at least we did. Later on in life we cultivated friends at the four-hour point of our eight-hour trip and an overnight stay at their house helped considerably ;o)
toys: anything that blinks or makes noise, anything new. (sometimes we purposely squirreled away birthday/Christmas toys until our next trip – even a toy that disappears for a few weeks is ‘new’.) Board books. Closed tupperware with cheerios inside for a rattle. Cheap or broken calculator. Nesting yogurt containers. Car keys. a handful of Duplo blocks. Small stuffed animals. Bath toys. Dead cordless phone.
snacks: start with cheerios, Chex, wheat puffs. Feed one at a time to make feeding time last as LOOOONG as you can – wait until she asks for or looks for the next. As need be turn to raisins, Craisins, small crackers, etc… and we usually packed ’emergency’ M&Ms if we needed to squeeze one last half hour out of an exhausted cranky child.
the best thing that worked for extending happy baby travel was buckling myself in next to them instead of in front – reading to them, picking up toys that had dropped, etc. I don’t like playing cheerleader, and found it exhausting – but extremely helpful for happy travel until my bigger kids could read well on their own and/or entertain the younger two.
Leaving early didn’t work for our kids – once they were up they were up, but naps were typically a bit longer and we planned our breaks around the naps. We just doubled travel time in the first two years — typically making it in 1.5 times the normal travel time and calling the extra .5 time “saved”. Baby falling asleep was my time to sit up front and have real conversation with Daniel.
I found I could buckle myself in sideways using the lap belt (maybe technically not legal or safe?) and nurse with baby still in car seat, and that seemed to help/comfort as well…. can’t remember if you’ve weaned her?
I still wish someone would make a mom-plus-baby carseat where mom buckles in to the car, straps something on her, and then can buckle baby largely on her lap. Are there any madcap inventors or car seat manufacturers reading your blog? :o)
if you’re going the northern route through the UP let me know and I can tell you where play places and other good stopping places are (and are not) since we regularly travel to Kenosha from the UP… quite a few nice beach stops, summer is SO much better than winter for traveling the UP.
excited to see you on the beach soon! Daniel hopes to have his new KAP kite finished by then… ;o)
We use the “leave when they should sleep” technique. So either early in the morning or late in the evening. Or leave when you know that a nap should break up quite a bit of the trip. That helps get a good chunk out of the way. I never had a problem with Kaia when we’d plow through to places. But when we did stop she’d get out and run around. Pre-walking with Mo (last month) we just let him roam around in the dirt/grass/sand. I’m not a germaphobe, but I think that would be much cleaner than WalMart floors.
Anything a 1 year old eats is messy. But thin pretzel sticks tend not to crumble like other things. Small chunks of cheese are also very popular at our house.
We quite often sing along to the Wiggles on our car rides. It’s a family affair, but at 1 I’m not sure Lucy will really care yet. Mo just wants to groove, he doesn’t care what to. K-Love, Wiggles, Country station it’s all the same to him.
Good luck and enjoy!
We are in Colorado, 20 hours in the car to get here.
We just went at Maddy “rate” … She sleeps, I drive. She is awake, Brian plays toys with her while sitting in the back with her. and although she may not talk alot we do songs and look out the window. She understands a lot more than you may think.
We also stop in play lands (McDonalds) and go into the slids with her. We stop at parks. We did every thing we could to keep her going strong. I think she did better than us. Now for the trip home I am thinking we are going to drive through the night and try to get home in closer to one shot. We will see.
We have done a lot of our driving at night when Benjamin was sleeping (we have yet to undertake any significant length trip with Ella). For the naps, we actually found a portable DVD player with Elmo’s world to work pretty good – he would zone out watching it, fall asleep and then we would turn it off.
Pretzel rods (the big fat ones) are good for babies to chew on, they can get a bit messy though. You could get one of those car seat trays (they snap on the front of the car seat to make a little table) and if she doesn’t eat them, let her color with crayons. Probably it would be best to sit back there with her when she’s coloring to keep the crayon on the paper/table. (I find it helpful at that age to either give them the whole coloring book so it won’t slide as much or tape a piece of paper to the table). They sell the car seat table thing at One Step Ahead (www.onestepahead.com) it’s called a Taby Tray. They probably sell something similar at Babies R Us or Target.
For all our airplane trips with Benjamin, we’ve gotten him a couple new toys/books to help amuse him.
As far as stops go, if she’ll walk holding your fingers, that’s always an option or you could bring a big blanket and stop at a park (although even Ella won’t stay on a blanket now that she can crawl, so I don’t know if Lucy would). I figure grass and dirt can’t have too many germs anyway.
A friend of mine who is married to a pediatrician, swears by Benadryl. It makes the baby sleepy and relaxed (unless it makes them hyper – for some kids it does do that) so they sleep most of the way. I never thought I would medicate my child for the purpose of traveling, but we did do it once for a plane flight when he just wouldn’t calm down and he slept the whole way (4 hours). My friends logic with the Benadryl was something like – is it better for the baby to be unnecessarily medicated or to scream for hours on end? Obviously when presented with that choice, we chose medication, but I would only do it again if I absolutely had to – I don’t like giving medicine for no reason.
I thought of one more thing while driving the kids in the car today – at Lucy’s age, Benjamin loved playing with empty plastic water bottles (like the kind you get from a vending machine). He would crinkle them, take the top off and put it back on, etc. He also liked it with a little bit of water in it and then he would shake it (just make sure the tops on tight enough that they can’t get it off!).
When we took Daniel with us to Cedar Camp last year, he was 2-1/2. For us, frequent stops was a must (though he endured it well). We kept him active by singing along to the music and engaging him while we talked. Bringing along some kid music as well as adult music helped too.
Around his naptime, he fell asleep, so that was nice. All in all, I believe he enjoyed the drive very much.
As for the time up at Cedar Campus…uh…that was a different ball of wax. But seeing that Lucy isn’t walking anywhere, I think you’ll be sane. Hopefully, it won’t rain. Bring lots of toys!
And say hi to Mick from the Wanaks!
I just have to say THANK YOU for all of these tips! We are starting to pack now, and we are taking action on a lot of these ideas. You all are terrific!