Traveling With Babies

Sometimes the four-year gap from the newborn stage to the age of my older two really shows.  We finally got used to traveling with potty trained kids who play video games, watch movies and read books for long car trips.  We had a good system down, knowing when to stop, and not having to entertain them.

Enter Noah.

Before I get into the latest trip, I do have to admit that he is a great little traveler.  All of our kids learn pretty quickly how to sit in the car for a long time, driving to see my family 300 miles away.

As we came home this past week from visiting my parents, he was pretty good.  He did manage to spit up all over his clothes immediately after we had just made a quick stop, but since he is a boy who does not care about such things (seriously, the kid can fill his diaper in the middle of the night and blissfully sleep through it), we kept going.  After another stop, I changed his outfit so that he would be fresh and ready to go for the next 100 miles.

That lasted about 10 miles.

Allow me to paint the picture...

Nick was driving, Caleb was in the middle seat and Abby was in the back seat, next to all of the suitcases and "stuff" (amazing how much "stuff" kids need for a few days).  I climbed from the front seat to the back (thank you yoga flexibility), only hitting my head on the dvd player once and my elbow on the seat twice so that I could feed Noah his bottle.

(By the way, totally loving this bottle thing.  Instead of stopping to get him out and nurse and extend the trip by another twenty minutes, I can keep him in his seat for most of the feeding.  I guess I could have nursed him the same way and gave all the truck drivers a show, but I do have some sense of modesty.)

So, I perched on the entire inch of space left next to Abby, balancing the bottle in Noah's mouth.  Halfway through his meal, I heard an explosion coming from his rear end.  That boy has amazing timing.

Now, he could have pooped a few miles back when we stopped.  Or even earlier at the first stop.  But, no, my son decided to poop through his diaper and up his back in the middle of a huge rain storm, hail and all.

Oh, and in the I-71 stretch between Columbus and Cincinnati, where there are no signs of life anywhere.

So, I took him out of the carseat while Nick continued to drive (go ahead and judge, all of you non-parents), laid him on the changing pad (he was cushioned by Caleb's blankets) and I proceeded to clean up my little boy. 

All I can say is thank goodness for my little plastic bags that I keep in the diaper bag. 

It was really fun climbing to the very back of the van to find a change of clothes in his suitcase.  That was buried on the bottom.  While Nick swerved in the wind.

We are thinking about taking a vacation this summer that involves flying on a plane.  Lord help us all.