Disclaimer: I often approach parenting with reckless abandon. I blame this on the past year of having a crazy toddler and a cranky baby. If I wanted to do something I had to just throw caution to the wind or I never would have left the house. I have obviously curbed my enthusiasm and become a much better planner/parent over the course of the year. I still try to do everything I want to do without getting too concerned about the technicalities of how crazy things could get. But, I just plan it to death to hopefully come out somewhere in the middle. That trip to grandma's in April is the perfect example of what I'm talking about.
Okay, so I went to Americus, GA in April without Seth. I packed really well. I had snacks, books, activities, etc. and felt confident I had my act together. For some reason, I was more concerned with keeping everyone happy than I was with everyday things like using the bathroom. Lila had just gotten really good at telling me when we were in the car if she had to potty. When she told me she had to go I exited, got out of the car, and then stood there stunned. I almost said out loud to no one, "what do I do with Evie???". Toddlers and public bathrooms are hard work people. I realized I forgot the one key ingredient that royally screwed my situation. My Ergo (baby carrier). I had to figure out how to not let Lila touch anything, not let Evie touch anything, AND get the pee in the toilet at the same time. I'm good, but let's be honest. If I was that kind of a miracle worker I wouldn't be cleaning toilets similar to the one I was just about to navigate.
Anyway, I had to think fast as Lila did the pee pee dance and prematurely lost her mind about the hand dryer because she's deathly afraid of them. This is when having a large mommy purse comes in handy. I spread the purse as wide as it would go on the floor of the handicapped stall, sat Evie on it, and put my foot gently on her lap so she couldn't move. I covered every inch of the toilet with toilet paper and sat Lila on it as Evie went from normal to horror movie scream in two seconds flat. She's so good at that. Honestly, if you're in the business of making movies and you need a baby to stand in scream for your really great actress that is no good at the scary screaming part give me a shout.
Lila finished up, I grabbed Evie and my purse, and we began to exit the stall just in time for someone to restart the hand dryer. Lila might as well have jumped in the toilet because she pretty much touched everything in an effort to get out of the bathroom anyway. I thought about trying to explain how counterproductive that was to my previous efforts but decided to save that little lecture for another time. There was no hand washing. Instead I bathed everyone in hand sanitizer in the car. Again, counterproductive to some degree. I believe in picking your battles and re-entering the bathroom while the hand dryer was going didn't make the cut.
I got back in the car and vowed never to breathe a word of this debacle. And then I told some ladies at girls dinner a few months ago. And then I went on another solo trip this past weekend back to Americus...
I brought the Ergo this time. And I made my mom follow me. There was a little bit of a split up initially and I successfully navigated a Chick-fil-A bathroom by myself! The weekend was a blast. As I got in the car to head home I was exhausted but glad things had gone smoothly.
As we got going Lila passed out within seconds. Thank God once she's out she's out for a while. Evie was reading away and talking to herself when out of the corner of my eye I saw an ant on my leg. Then I began to see more and more ants around the driver side of the car. Evie does not sleep well in the car, but I knew she would be falling asleep soon. I called mom and asked if we could stop to get gas before Evie fell asleep and check out the bug situation I was in.
When I got out it became clear that this was no small problem. I remembered there were many ant piles in the driveway at the lake house. Apparently my less than clean car had just enough random cheerios to entice them in. We covered the ants we could see with Raid, rolled down the windows, and headed home. Again, within minutes Evie was asleep. In a normal world (not mine) both of my kids asleep on a road trip would be best case scenario. However, as we got going the ants that didn't drown in Raid slowly started to find ways to get away from the it. Those ways involved crawling ON ME. Driving with ants crawling on you so that your children can sleep after an exhausting weekend is what I like to call "THIS IS HOW MUCH I LOVE YOU". Did I mention there was some crazy hit and run accident on 75 that required sitting in traffic and an eventual rerouting to get home? Good times.
Solo road trip round two made me think of solo road trip round one and how my friends said I should blog about that silly little story. So there you have it. Solo road trip round three will occur when all of my children are at least in elementary school.
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