First Road Trip

It's a long weekend here and we braved up and took a road trip to visit my sister in Ottawa. That's a 4-5 hour drive from Toronto depending on how much traffic you hit and it was only after much discussion that we decided to take the plunge and just go for it. Yes, the kids would probably be off their routine but sometimes, changes to the routine are good. I want to continue to expose them to new environments, new people and new things so they aren't afraid of their own shadow and what better way than a little road trip?

I also figured that Ottawa was a very safe place for us to go...we were going to stay with my sister so she has one of everything already so we didn't have to bring up both of our things. Besides, there are a lot of helping hands in Ottawa so it's not as if we would be completely on our own either.

The plan was to leave at bedtime so the girls would fall asleep in the car and then sleep all the way up. We left at 6pm right on the dot which I thought was a pretty good accomplishment given that being on time with two small kids is a challenging feat these days. The girls fussed and cried for a few minutes but then fell asleep for a little while. This being Toronto though and the traffic to get out of the city being what it is on a Friday night of a long weekend, we hit stop-and-go congestion on the way out of the city. They woke up. They fussed and cried for about a half hour and then finally fell asleep shortly after 7pm. After that, they stayed asleep which was a relief as two crying kids in a small enclosed space...well, not fun by any stretch of the imagination.

We arrived in Ottawa at around 10:30pm and we even managed to get everything set up in our room and transfer the kids out of their car seats into their play pens without waking them up!! That was awesome as I was planning on feeding them and then trying to put them down after that if they woke up while being transferred. Not necessary - amazing! The kids were great and I was beginning to think that this wasn't such a bad idea to get away for a weekend.

Sure, it was a little inconvenient as I had to pump twice in the car on the way up but it was worth the effort to get there. I started feeling cocky and wondering if I could take the kids up to Ottawa myself without my DH when he travels later this fall. If traveling with the kids was that easy, a road trip by myself would be a piece of cake!

The weekend was a lot of fun with more social time with adults than I've had in a loooong time. We went out for brunch both days (I know! Two days in a row!!), enjoyed a BBQ dinner on Saturday at my sister's house, the weather was awesome...for a first road trip, this was fantastic. We couldn't have asked for a better weekend and we really enjoyed ourselves.

Then, the ride home.

Not so fantastic.

Let's say that I am not so cocky anymore and I won't be attempting a solo road trip anymore. We started out a half hour late and it doesn't sound like much, but we missed getting Victoria to bed on time and that resulted in an overtired child that fussed and cried the entire trip back.

The. Entire. Trip. Back.

The poor thing. I think part of the problem was that she was overtired and so then had trouble falling asleep. To compound the issue, she is a stomach sleeper and she realized that she wasn't sleeping on her stomach in her car seat like she wanted to which added to her general state of being upset. So, the result was one very upset child that fussed and cried off an on for the whole trip. Plus, when we got back into Toronto, the highway lights really bothered them and both girls woke up even though I had draped their car seats with blankets to stop the lights from shining directly into their eyes.

I was exhausted when we got home from listening to all the crying. As both girls were wide awake, we decided to feed them and then put them to bed again. They happily ate their extra meal but then very unhappily went to bed, loudly complaining (read: screaming) for a half hour before finally settling down to sleep. I also realized that if I attempted to make this return trip by myself, I would have had to get the two kids into the house and fed when I got home late at night plus then I would have to unpack the car by myself, all after driving for 4 hours straight. No can do - I'm not that energetic unfortunately.

A great weekend until the trip back home. We don't regret going but we are certainly noticing the impact this has had on the girls. Victoria is still a little out of sorts with her napping and sleeping still not back to normal yet but we are working our way through that and it is getting better. I'm glad they were exposed to so many new things and with all things, it's a trade off. We're juggling as best we can and figuring things out along the way but this was one trade off that I think was worth a few days/nights of bad sleeping.

Yay road trip!