I’m sure I’m not the only one to take two young kids on a long trip, all by yourself. With Luke being three and not walking on his own, and our baby girl of 15 months also not walking completely yet…presented quite a challenge. Many of you also know some of the details of this trip…so I’m going to highlight on the “fun” parts.
One the way to Cleveland we went to my brother’s house in Canton, MI. Who is normally 5 ½ hours away. Well with two kids and on my own it took a little longer, 9 hours (did I mention we also encountered a snow storm?) On the way home…..without a snow storm we made it in 7 hours…not too bad.
Besides the snow storm on the way out to my brother’s, we stopped once for a diaper/potty break. Mainly because I also needed to go and I wanted to make sure the diapers were changed at least once on this trip. It was raining but let up a little when I stopped. I figured we would go in to a local Burger King, change diapers, go pee and then go through the drive through for some lunch…all in one stop. Well, the good news was that we were able to get the food and I was able to empty my bladder. The bad news was that they had no diaper changing station. Their larger handicapped stall also had an overflowing toilet…so water was all over the floor. So when I went pee, I had to take Luke and his walker along with our baby girl and myself into a regular sized stall. Without a changing station to strap our baby girl down to I had her also hold on to brother’s walker, and kept telling her to keep holding on (since she tends to go down to her knees quickly to crawl around). It worked out…but I was quick.
I still had the dilemma of changing the kid’s diapers and the rain was picking up again. I knew I couldn’t try to change the diapers in the car…with the rain and the only open seat being the driver’s seat…I knew that wouldn’t be a good combo. So I got out the plastic diaper changing pad and placed it on a booth seat and changed both diapers. An older lady kept staring at me, I was just waiting for her to come over and yell at me for being a horrible person to change diapers in public like that. But when we left she gave me a little smile, like she completely understood.
Another fun moment was when I was feeding the kids. Being on my own, I couldn’t waste time by stopping to feed the kids every time they were hungry. So I hooked up a tray on both of their car seats. This worked pretty well. I would just grab some food and throw it on to their trays. They were quick to tell me when they wanted more. I would just throw some more food on their trays. There were only two problems; one was when they ran out of juice and I had to find a place to pull over so I could fill up their cups (which were attached to straps so they couldn’t drop them…far anyway). The other problem was Luke. He found that if he put enough force behind it he could get his tray to pop off. So a few times I had to pull over so I could reattach the tray before giving him more food.
At one point during our trip to my brother’s house we were stopped completely in traffic, from the bad snow/weather. At this point I also had ice built up on my windshield wipers, so I got out and knocked off the ice and I also had to reattach Luke’s tray at this point so I could try to feed the kids some supper. I think all the people around me thought I was nuts. It was also getting dark…so I had to turn on the dome lights to see and get food out. With the lights on I would dig around and find food and fill up juice cups, all while looking over my shoulder to see if traffic started to move again. When it inched forward a little I would quickly turn around and move the car forward 30 feet, then put the car back in park while I went back to finding “supper” for the kids.
Our baby girl did try to help me out. At one point when Luke was crying she reached over to offer him some of her food. It was very nice of her. Of course Luke took it and then threw it across the car. Oh the fun times we had!!
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