Friday, November 18, 2011

Indianapolis!!!

Thoughts on our most recent road trip:
  • Despite the excruciating hatred of the car in their early months (12 months, to be exact), the girls are now rockstar road-trippers
  • Go crazy in the bulk section before departing (The Merc, Whole Foods): stock up on lots of fun (and healthy) treats to offer throughout the day (nuts, dried fruit, yogurt-covered pretzels)
  • Also for food, take advantage of all the easy-to-eat, packaged, organic kid-friendly finds such as: Stonyfield organic yogurt squeezers, Happy Tot Pouches. While the girls are well past 3 (say, what?!?!?!!), I have no problem giving them things like the happy tot pouches, which might be geared for younger ones, because what harm could it possibly do?
  • Get books on tape from the library!! The girls LOVE stories, and while my ginger pills help protect me from getting queasy in the car, I still can't ride and read. With their carseats side-by-side, they shared the book-holding and listened to book after book. 
  • Start enforcing naps in the car at an early age. We began taking the girls to visit their great grandma at Lake of the Ozarks when they were one. We'd always travel at naptime and, after letting them enjoy the ride for a bit, we got them in the habit of taking their nap, as usual. We turn on some quiet music, tell them it's time for naps, and stop interacting with them. The girls had their normal 1 1/2 - 2 hour nap on both the drive to and from Indy. 
  • Have a few "aces in the hole". For us, it was a couple of new notepads, some new little colored pens, and assorted stickers. They are also very into babies right now, so I snagged a new outfit for each doll while we were in Indiana for the trip home. A little "special something" goes a long way while in the car.
  • We continue to greatly limit screen-time. The girls rode for 8-9 hours, each way, without a DVD, computer, or video of any sort. We all really enjoyed the trip! There was a lot of talking, a lot of singing, some "I spy", and endless sightseeing. We were about 1/4 of the way home and the girls were already asking for another roadtrip. Those are my kind of girls!