ROAD TRIP!!!

Have no fear. We Schlabachs are not dead. We've just been traveling and SUPER busy with events, birthdays, seeing friends and lots and lots of family. There was no time for blogging. Shoot, there wasn't even time to take pictures!

This is my third or fourth trip solo with the kids back to Ohio. Although I know what to expect, it doesn't make the trips any easier. I just hold my breath and hope we make it without anything dramatic happening (remember puking children, broken-down cars and screaming baby last time??).

This was taken while stopped in traffic. It was also the last hour of the trip and both kids had fallen asleep for the fist time at the same time! So I got to listen to my music and no princess movies for a whole.... twenty minutes. Cohen woke up to poop. :)

My front seat travel pack! Hot water, cool water, formula, apple juice, snacks, coloring books, DVDs, wipes, cash for tolls... did I forget anything!

Our trip back to Ohio last week took nine hours to make the 6.5 hour drive sans children. Why, you may ask, the long delay? Perhaps it was because my three-year-old likes to mess with me and told me every half hour she had to pee. Did she pee every time? Yes. Could she have held it a little longer? Most definitely. Did I want an accident in the car? No way. So we stopped....every time she told me she thought she needed to pee....whether it was pouring down rain or not....whether Cohen had finally fell asleep or not.... To her credit, she did offer to pee in the grass after the 5th time so we wouldn't have to find an exit again. :)

Traveling girl

The way home was much better! Emery had her bladder under control, Cohen took several naps and everything seemed to be lining up this time as far as bathroom breaks, time to eat and filling up on gas at the same time.

I think we watched -- we as in, she watched, I listened for 8 hours -- the Mickey Mouse in Wonderland Cuckoo Bird movie twice, Disney Princess Sing-A-Long four times, Little Mermaid one and a half times.... needless to say I was super happy when they both fell asleep at the same time and my K-Love station was back on the radio for a short time to rock it out while they snored away in the backseat.

We were making amazing time for us and were to be home in about 7.5- 8 hours. We had made our last scheduled stop to feed Cohen, get gas in the car, get caffeine for Momma at Starbucks and a snack for Emery. I had just declared, "this is the last stop til home" -- which was only an hour and half away.

Mr. Poopypants happy he's getting out of the car seat to get his diaper changed

Apparently Cohen didn't get the memo. Or perhaps he did and being quite the contrarian  that he is, wanted to jack up the plans. He choose 20 minutes into our no-stop last stretch to begin letting out the poop he's been holding in for the past two days. If you know this child, you know he hates nothing more than pooping except perhaps not being fed the instant he wants it. So he began his whole meltdown routine while he's trying to poop. It sounds much like a cross between he can't breathe because he gasps as loud as he can while pooping and that someone is trying to hurt him because he scream cries from the second he starts pooping until about 10 minutes after he's been changed and clean. It's just who he is. He has hated pooping since the minute he was born. 

Beautiful North Carolina skyline driving down the mountain

So once Emery and I sniff the air in the vehicle and ascertain that he seems to be done pooping, we find an exit and I quickly change him in the front floorboard of the car. Not 30 minutes later, he starts the whole routine again and I know he's pooping again. We had just hit Winston-Salem traffic on Hwy 52 and I was not about to get off just to get stuck on an exit. Poopypants was just going to have to deal with it for a little bit til we made it through town and home.

Needless to say the last part of the trip was not only smelly, stop and go and loud from his screaming at me, but we made it.... and in 8.5 hours. Phew! Less than 9!

My favorite sayings of Emery this trip:

"Wait mom, I want to see Poppy peeing in the grass!" -- What she is talking about, I have no idea. There was no person, let alone, anything peeing or even walking in the grass at the gas station that she thought Poppy was "peeing".

"Bubba, stop crying. It's just poop. Get it out. You smell bad."

"Momma, can we make a tunnel at our house? I love them."

"Are we home yet? I want to be in North Carolina?" as she's whining. Two minutes later? "Momma, are we in Ohio still? I want to go play with Mimi and Poppy." Three minutes later...."Momma, are we home yet?" I think we had a broken, indecisive record in the backseat.

Luckily for us, Drew, John and Megan will be traveling in our caravan next trip back to Ohio in July!

Over and out --