Traveling with a Toddler!

There is no need to go into the details of our move.  It sucked, and we hope to be getting some money back.  The movers were awful, too young to be left in charge, and were rude and careless.  We have had movers move us two other times with no issue.  I guess this time we just got stuck with duds.  Add that to the stress of being in the hospital for a few days the week before and trying to rush the last minute packing and we were actually looking forward to the 18 hour drive!

Thankfully I had planned far ahead and had packed two little totes of fun for Olivia.

Like usual, I wanted to be prepared.  She does well in the car, but it was going to be a long drive.  I wanted to try to avoid any issues.  I way over packed.  Part of that though, was that our stuff could have taken two weeks to get here.  So my thought was, then she'll at least have two small totes of toys.  But our stuff was the only thing on the truck, so the movers actually arrived the same day we did.

We planned ahead of time to take our time on the drive and to stop as needed.  Thank goodness that was already our mindset, because we were having to change diapers immediately and give two baths a day due to Olivia's surgery.  It all worked out.

We left Sunday night around 6.

 Because of the movers, we ended up having a late lunch.  I knew we'd be stopping for dinner after a little bit so I tried to just let her sit and entertain herself for a bit.  She did just that!

Our friends gave her a "BOZ" book as a going away gift.  She loved it!  I also picked up about 2 or 3 other new (cheap!) books over the few weeks to give her for the drive.  She is a book lover and looked at them multiple different times throughout the few days.

I tried not to spend too much money.  The one thing I did splurge on ($20) was a full size magnadoodle.  I had so many people say their kids love it in the car.  I knew we'd also get use out of it in the future when learning to write letters or even just drawing, so it wasn't just for the trip.  Of course, it's the one thing that Olivia showed the least interest in.  She likes to write with pens and pencils and draw, so I thought it was going to be a home run. She was less than impressed.

It started getting dark shortly after we ate dinner, so we put a DVD in and watched that for a while.  I bought just a handful of new $5 DVD's since she had seen everything we have multiple times.

We made sure to bathe her (for the second time) before we left the apartment, so that we could drive a little further on the first night.  After watching one movie I turned it off and tried to get her to go to sleep.  She eventually fell asleep and slept until we stopped around midnight.  We were fearing she would be up for a bit since the transfer woke her up (and that's just her style). Plus, she doesn't do well sleeping with us but she's too big for a pack and play at this point.  Surprisingly, she did great.  She was so tired from the thrown off schedule from the move that she went right to sleep!

I have a few dollar store cookie sheets from my teaching days.  I brought one along.  The magnetic animals are from our fridge.  I also brought along magnetic Melissa and Doug letters that we already had, but she didn't play with them much.

I got her this "praise mic" at Mardel on clearance for $1.50.  She thought it made her Sid the Science Kid! :)  She played with this multiple time throughout the trip as well.

I glued felt onto the back of the cookie sheet to make a felt board.  I got this little farm set at Mardel too.  It was by far her favorite activity out of my bag of tricks!

We purposely went the way of Missouri so that we could drive through where I went to college.  We stopped for lunch at Lambert's--home of the throwed roll.

We drove the 20 minutes to Springfield.  We stopped to get gas right across the street from the college and don't you know, Olivia fell asleep.

We didn't have a stroller and I didn't really want to wake her, so we just took a driving tour of the campus.

The cookie sheet also served as a lap tray.  She loved these little animals.

This slinky came from the dollar section at Target.

We only had about 5 hours to go on the last day.  She had caught on by then, and as soon as we got in the car she was asking for her toys.  I think she enjoyed that there was a steady flow of things to keep her busy.  She repeated a lot of the things that I already mentioned.  She also napped and watched some DVD's.  The new thing she did was coloring some pictures with markers.

Truth be told, I think she would have been more than happy to watch DVD's the entire 18 hours of drive time.  I, however, did not want her watching that much TV.  I am all about doing what you need to do to get through tough situations. I also am not opposed to her watching more than normal in one day.  But I knew that I could entertain her for part of the time where it didn't involve just staring at a screen.

I packed other things that didn't get used.... A box of her touch and feel flashcards, a box of her mini puzzles that she loves, stickers, small little play doh tubs from my teaching days, buttons and that bottle with the slit in it, and more.  We mostly played with the new stuff.  Like I said, she played with most of it two and three times so it was worth it.

She slept great the entire trip, she ate well, and she never once cried or complained about being in her car seat. I call that a success! :)