First Road Trip With Twins

Went to Tampa recently with the boys for their first road trip.  I am still exhausted and we did not even stay overnight.  It was a great trip though.   It is always good to reconnect with friends and to have a change in scenery.  Road trips are the palate cleansers for your life.

I realized a few things while we were out.

Hubby and I were delusional to think that we could have kept our old car, a Subaru Impreza Hatchback, for two more years.  We have a Toyota Venza now which I love!  There is so much room to stretch my legs out, even in the back seat. I can comfortably sit between the boys’ car seats and play with them during a long ride, but after adding–

• 2 pack n plays
• 1 double stroller
• 1 play mat
• 1 activity center
• 1 Medela hospital grade breast pump
• 1 cooler
• 1 diaper bag
• 1 miscellaneous bag
• 2 babies
• 2 adults
• 2 Winnie The Pooh Security Blankets
• 2 Sophie the Giraffes

I am almost positive that our next vehicle will be an 18 wheeler.

The boys did really well on the 2 1/2 hour trip until we inevitably took a wrong turn when we were oh so close to our destination — we were 7 minutes away.  At the moment when my husband needed me to put on my copilot’s hat they started screaming their little heads off.  My big boy loves to roll around and kept attempting to do so while strapped in his car seat.  Contorted with his left cheek flush against the seat, chest straining to follow and legs flailing, I shared his frustration.  My little one just screamed because his brother was screaming.  He rejected my logic when I explained to him that he did not have to cry just because his brother was crying.

20 minutes later we pulled into the driveway.  30 minutes later we were able to relax after hugging old friends, unloading all the gear, setting up all the gear and getting the boys settled.  As soon as they were settled, I had to pump.  Not much relaxing goes into visiting friends when you have two babies but we had a blast  It was a great test run for the big trip that we will take later this year.  It was a great test run for the overnight trip that we are going to take in a few weeks.

Two things that we have to keep in mind on our next trip.  The boys, apparently, will not sleep anywhere except at home.  We followed our usual routine to no avail.  They kept trying to fall asleep around their usual sleepy sleep time but they could not relax enough to do it.  They would nod off in hubby’s or my arms and their little eyelids would fly open as soon as we put them down.

The second thing is to survey the room where I breastfeed my baby boy.  I don’t always feed him from me because I also give him my milk in a bottle.  Sometimes though it calms him down to spend this special time with mommy.  Since we were away and he was a bit anxious, I decided to borrow a quiet dim room to feed him.  He is at that age also where he is so busy.  Honestly, he is the busiest person that I have ever known.  It takes a bit to get him to focus on eating.  He started to eat and then he stopped.  He puffed out his little lip and his eyes started to well up with tears.  No sound had left his mouth so I tried to distract him.  I stood him up on my lap to sing his favorite song (The Twist). He stuck his lip out even more and started looking all around the room for an exit.  Then the wailing started.  This is very unusual for him so I got up to walk him around while holding him in an effort to calm him down.  When I turned around, I saw the two deer heads on the wall.  My poor baby was absolutely terrified.  Once we left the room he calmed down immediately so, long story short, avoid deer heads when traveling with babies.

They fell asleep as soon as they were strapped into their car seats and did not wake up until they were home.  Once back inside of familiar surroundings they laughed and cooed and rolled around with joy.

Good times!

BTW- Enjoy the pics that I have posted.  They are from Odessa, Florida.  Feel free to use them if you like.  Just list me as a photo credit.