Last night, just west of Ellensburg, I turned to my husband and said, "Remember when we could just hop out of the car at a gas station and pee really quick and get back on the road? Or even pull through a coffee stand? Or grab some food? And be back on the interstate in like fifteen minutes?"
We both laughed rather maniacally.
It was past 8:30 and our "quick" dinner stop had taken two hours. Granted, we did choose to eat a real, sit-down meal at this little Thai restaurant we discovered years ago (oh, childless youth!) but Thai food is generally pretty quick; it was at least as fast as a meal at a diner would have been. It's just that each time we stop for anything on our trips between Washington and Montana or Minnesota, the following things need to happen:
We need to fill the car with gas.
We need to convince our daughter to pee.
We need to change Isaac's diaper.
I need to nurse Isaac.
We need to somehow juggle our children so that we can also pee.
We need to find coffee or get food. Or both. Often both.
And it's a really good idea if we can let our daughter run around a bit.
When we were carefree young things without babies, we could accomplish most or all of these things in one stop. We'd fill up the car, we'd dash inside to pee, we'd be back in the road in no time. We might get coffee at a drive-thru, but if we don't get out of the car, does it count as a stop? We'd generally allow ourselves one "real" meal in a long day of driving, as in one that doesn't come in a paper bag handed over a counter, but we didn't lose much time there, either. And if we decided to take time, it was a peaceful luxury, a break in the driving, a chance to stretch our legs and eat a leisurely dinner. (Leisurely dinner = one in which we don't have to worry about kids' menus, or whether or not we have sufficient tools with which to entertain our children during the time between ordering our food and receiving it. One in which we are both allowed to remain seated for the duration of the dinner. One in which we actually get to talk to each other and finish most of our sentences.)
Now, we need to make a few more stops. 1. Gas. 2. Someplace with food or coffee. 3. Someplace with Good Bathrooms (translation: a place to change diapers that isn't the floor, and a toilet that is sufficiently clean enough for my daughter to use, as she is extremely picky about such things and also obviously hasn't mastered squatting. Because she is three, and also short). I can nurse Isaac just about anywhere, but that can take anywhere between one and fifteen minutes. If my children were perfectly programmed robots, I would nurse Isaac while Matt helped Suzannah use the potty, or Matt would change Isaac while Suzannah and I used the bathroom, and then Matt would supervise a few minutes of Running Around Time while I nursed the baby, and then I'd get both children buckled into the car while he managed to use the bathroom, and is this complicated enough yet? Because sometimes Suzannah insists that Mommy take her to the potty and change the baby, and if Mommy has to do both of those things we lose a few minutes, because Mommy doesn't have six arms. And we could just say, in our We Are Not Messing Around voices, "Suzannah? Daddy is changing Isaac this time, so you are going to have to deal." But then we would lose time anyway, because our daughter would be boneless on the floor. Also, we have to allow extra time for things like convincing our daughter to take off her pink slippers and put on her sneakers so we can walk across the muddy parking lot in the rain, and sometimes that conversation takes awhile. And we could just physically take off her slippers and put her sneakers on, I suppose, but then there's that "boneless on the floor" thing again, and that usually comes with sobbing, by the way.
(I should probably call this entry "Birth Control.")
Now, we have to make Very Important Decisions like, do we go for the "quick" stop in Couer d'Alene at the Hotel With Nice Bathrooms and Comfortable Lobby, or do we stop at the Spokane Valley Mall and eat at the food court and wander around and let Suzannah play in the kids' play area and then gas up the car, a stop that will cost us in time but will possibly make the part where we have to be in the car for another six hours a bit more manageable?
My dad predicted we'd arrive home sometime around 10:00 last night. He has the uncanny ability to predict within a few minutes the exact time we'll arrive anywhere, even taking into account stops for gas and food and whatever else, and really, we were on target to arrive home then. But our "whatever else" is two children, and also, we drove through plenty of snow this weekend, including a storm on Snoqualmie Pass last night. (Uh, universe? I know I said I missed snow, but I said that at CHRISTMAS and it is now MAY.) We pulled into our driveway sometime past eleven.
Overall, it was a good trip -- if a bit frenetic -- and I'm glad we did it. We introduced my grandma to her great-grandson on her eightieth birthday, introduced both of our children to my aunts and uncles who have never even met Suzannah, ate a lot of wonderful food, drove through many of the landscapes that have shaped my life, visited a couple of my favorite people, and, oh yes, we had our FIRST DATE ALONE TOGETHER since before Isaac was born when my parents took both of their grandchildren off our grateful hands and shooed us out the door for a few hours. (See the part above about "Leisurely Dinners." In this case it was dinner, and wine, and dessert, and cocktails, and an hour of cozy reading and drinking coffee at one of our favorite coffee shops. I can't even put into words how wonderful that felt. And that four-hour recharge was also exactly the amount of time it took to make me very eager to get back home to my babies, who, incidentally, were angels for Grandpa and Grandma. It must have gone well, at any rate, since Suzannah spent the first ten hours of our trip home yesterday saying, "I don't wanna go home. I wanna go back to Grandpa and Grandma's first.")
It was also Isaac's first road trip, which he weathered quite well. We were supposed to make it all the way to Havre, Montana on Thursday, but we ended up stopping for the night in Helena, three-and-a-half hours short of our destination. It's hard for me to admit defeat like that, but when I called my dad at nine o'clock and said, "We're stopping for food, and it's snowing, and we're exhausted, and we'll probably get there at like two in the morning BUT THAT'S FINE, DON'T WORRY ABOUT US," he said, "You might consider stopping for the night right now. Then you could get a good night's rest and just come up here in the morning." We checked into the Holiday Inn Express about five seconds later. It was a good decision. We'd been on the road since 7:30 that morning and we were just SO DONE, especially Isaac, who had a really hard time spending so much time in his carseat and not on Mama, except for a few nursing/cuddling breaks. Each time I went to get him out of the car his little face would just explode with joy, and each time I had to buckle him back in he looked so sad and confused and also like maybe I didn't actually know what I was doing.
Suzannah slept for a total of, oh, ninety minutes in the car between Thursday morning and Monday night. Ninety minutes in about ten million hours of driving. She was mostly great, though; she had lots of books and toys, and even though whoever wasn't driving had to constantly reach this or that for her, or position the bag a certain way, or retrieve whatever she'd dropped, she remained in pretty good spirits. And when she wasn't, frankly, I understood. Actually, we all slept really well each night, which is more important than sleeping in the car. I'd been worried about this, since a.) we never really know how hotel stays will go, and b.) she seemed to be under the impression than I would be sleeping with her at Grandma and Grandpa's house, in my old bed. Which I did last summer, and which was awkward with my big pregnant belly, and which was not a real practical possibility when you add her nursing, co-sleeping baby brother into the mix. My parents graciously offered their room to us, and they have the most amazingly comfortable king-sized bed I've ever slept in, so I thought -- hey, worst-case scenario, we ALL sleep in that bed. (Matt actually had the nerve to say to Suzannah, "Oh, you want Mommy to sleep with you? Is Daddy going to have to sleep all by himself?" And I was like, NICE TRY, BUSTER.)
I feel like I spend a great deal of time and energy preparing myself for worst-case scenarios. This might make me slightly crazier than I need to be, but I've decided it is very smart, too, because! I'm either right, or I'm pleasantly surprised. We spent our first two nights on the road in hotels -- rooms with two queen-sized beds -- and Suzannah slept contentedly, all night long and by herself, in one of the beds while Matt and I slept with Isaac cocooned between us in the other. On the third and fourth nights, she slept contentedly, all night long and by herself, in my old bedroom across the hall from my parents' room, where Matt and Isaac and I also slept contentedly and all night long. Four nights in a row of good sleep? On the road? In slightly unpredictable circumstances? I HEREBY DECLARE THE ENTIRE TRIP A SUCCESS.
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