Traveling…

Forgive my absence from the blogging world. We took a trip down to the LA area to visit family and I experienced writer’s block upon returning home for the LAMEST reason ever! Half of my LA pictures were lost in the digital world down at my parent’s house. So, I finally just d/l them off Facebook and I’m ready to catch up.

We left at about 7:30 pm and drove until about 2am, figuring Cooper would hopefully sleep throughout the drive and I wouldn’t have to play “1,000 Ways to Distract a Child” the entire time. Here are a few tips that worked for us regarding traveling…

Traveling Tips

• Talk about your upcoming trip. We did with Cooper and he was actually ecstatic to leave and go see Grammy & Papa.
• Drive long drives at night.
• Bring as many familiar items for bedtime routine as possible. Cooper has the Fisher Price “Ocean Wonders” Aquarium in his crib – I didn’t bring it the trip before – disastrous sleeping! Not sure if it was remembering it this time that did the trick, but sleeping was much more successful this time around.
• IF you do drive during the day…(we did on the return trip)

     - Play, “What’s the driver doing?”. We looked into the passing cars to see if the driver was wearing a hat, or sunglasses, or picking their nose. It helped pass some time.

    - A movie on an Ipod, laptop, or DVD player is NOT going to kill them. We watched Monsters Inc. It was so much fun!

    -Lastly, PLAN on stopping. It’s going to happen. Then, plan on having a sly way to sneak them back into the car. There will inevitably be resistance to getting back in the car after they’ve already been in the car for such a long time. I didn’t do this, but may in the future. Bring a small wrapped toy (even from the Dollar Store, one for each stop you know you’ll make) that they can play with in the car. Give it to them once they are happily seated in their car seat.

We had outrageously successful travels! More on the trip to come…