Tommy's First Car Ride

This weekend was the annual Stremlow family reunion in Coleman (which is just east of Midland).     Since the reunion and Nicky's wedding a few weeks ago are my only "vacations" this summer, I decided to just extend my drive a little bit longer by leaving a day early to spend the night at my friend Lacey's apartment for some much needed girl talk and laughs.  When I made plans with her for Friday night I didn't quite realize where Howell was.  When I found out that it was about 3 hours from Traverse City I was a little nervous about how Tommy was going to do.  This was his first car ride longer than just across town and even with short trips he can be extremely difficult.  I was not looking forward to three hours of crying.

To prepare for the long drive I first took Tommy to the pool to wear him out a bit as well as making sure that I fed him a full 8oz bottle before we left.  While he took his first nap, I packed the car and I swear I took half the house with us!  Since this was our first trip I had no idea what exactly he would need and with my luck, I wouldn't pack enough formula/onezies/diapers and that's when he would need them the most.  I also made sure to take baby Tylenol and Oragel with me just in case.  Luckily I didn't need it. 

I changed him one last time and off we went!  I put a basket of his toys in my front seat so that I could pass new toys back to him when he started to get fussy.  He did pretty well for the first hour and a half and even took a little nap.  Then it got a little bit rocky.  That's when he was basically covered in toys!  I ended up using my "big gun": the light up snail.  It was a desperate plea when I gave him that toy because for the rest of the drive all I heard were loud "wahoo"s, "ha ha ha"s, and random noises.  He ended up falling asleep again for a little while, which was nice except the toy kept going off because it was stuck between Tommy's foot and the back seat. 

I desperately wanted to travel 100mph (of course I did not!!! Don't worry, I stayed a responsible mommy) during the last 30 minutes of our drive when he was screaming at me and completely done with our drive.  I was tempted to stop but I knew that if I had it would have been HORRIBLE to get him back in his seat.  I've been there before....it's not pretty!  Since we were relatively close I kept going.  Once we arrived he was so much better!  It helped that he was being adored by my friend Lacey.  He has a thing for pretty girls.....I'm in trouble!

The rest of our drives went about the same.  He was good for most of the trip but the end would be taxing.  I was proud of how well he did overall but I don't plan on attempting any drives longer than 3 hours by myself for a while longer.....and even that is pushing it!!

You can't see it but our car is packed full!

He was overall not enthused with being strapped in the car for a few hours.