The Way To The Beach

We go to the Outer Banks every year for vacation. Each year we take two days to travel down and one day to come home. This year, Jacob flew down with my mom, sister and niece. They flew into Norfolk, so Greg, Andrew and I met them as well as some of my other relatives in Norfolk on a Friday.

Andrew is a terrible traveler. He can't even make it from home to day care without a meltdown, so I was worried about the drive to the beach as it turned out, with good reason. He was great when he was sleeping, but he didn't sleep much. Oh, I forgot to mention - he doesn't sleep well anywhere except in his own bed, so sleeping in the car seat wasn't really an option either.

So, he slept for 30 minutes in a stretch, then would be up for a few hours, during which, he would be screaming. When he awoke and started screaming, we pulled over and let him walk around. We found some pretty strange play places - parking lots, fields behind shopping centers, really, really gross play yards in fast food restaurants (I hate fast food about as much as I hate Wal Mart! When Greg saw a partially chewed up hamburger under a slide, it was all we could do not to run away!)

Here he is outside some warehouse/shopping center, picking up rocks, happy as can be!

This was on the final stretch of the trip, just when we thought we were almost done - a perfect example of "don't count your chickens before they hatch!"

At 7pm, we thought we were home free! We had just stopped for dinner. Andrew was tired, so we hopped back in the car and he fell right asleep. We had 60 miles to go, and the traffic was minimal. Yes! We were going to make it there in no time and in quiet! Then, in a matter of minutes, traffic came to a screeching halt, Andrew woke up, and the whole notion of a peaceful end to the first day of the trip was shattered. At the point of this video, we had been driving for 10 hours. I sent it to my mom's cell phone for Jacob. By the time we met everyone at the hotel, we had spent 11 hours in the car. The trip, had it been Greg and I alone, would have taken about 5 and a half hours.

Finally, we did make it, and it ended well. The next day's travel was not so bad for any of us. It was only a two hour drive and Andrew actually slept most of that day. I felt bad for him. It was annoying for us to stop so much, and to listen to his screaming, but at least we knew what was going on. Poor Andrew had no idea why we continually strapped him down and restrained him. He's used to having free run in a fairly large area most of the day. He's a happy boy, who just wants to explore, and sitting for an entire day in a car seat is no fun. It'll get better as he gets older. It's just too bad that this year's drive to and from the beach certainly weren't the highlights of the trip!