Our Traveling Companion's Just 10 Weeks Old...

...and she's now survived the infamous drive from Chicago to Massachusetts that Joshua and I have made countless times over the past seven years. Literally, we tried to figure out how many times we've done the 1800 mile roundtrip, and we cannot. We've done it with friends, with our dog; we've left in the morning, at night, and a few crazy times Joshua picked me up after a 12 hour night shift and off we went. It's not a terrible drive, but it's long, not particularly scenic, and not the kind of experience that would inspire one to think, "yes, a baby in the backseat would really improve everything here." But it's shockingly cheaper than flying (it cost us $77 in gas to get here - we've never been more thankful for our little Prius), and it allows us to stop in upstate NY to see my Mom's side of the family. We can also pack the hell out of our car and not worry about lugging a carseat, a travel crib, and clothes for three people (plus my fear-of-flying emotional baggage) onto a plane. Really, once we get ourselves and our ridiculous amount of luggage into the car and onto Lake Shore Drive, we always remember how much we love our crazy cross-country trips.



Bonus points if you can easily spot the sweet baby all ready in her carseat at 5am Saturday morning, surrounded by said ridiculous amount of luggage. More bonus points if you don't judge us on the cleanliness of our countertops, which is hovering somewhere around Don't Eat Off Us, It's Just Not Safe.



I'm going to use this picture as evidence of what I've been saying to Joshua since we got pregnant, which is that this wonderful, incredibly efficient, one-child car will need to be upgraded the second we start thinking about number two.



We make a big point of only eating healthy when we are road-tripping.



That's a huge lie. We actually go all out with the greasy road trip food and excessive caffeine consumption (breastfeeding put a damper on this, sigh). What I failed to photograph here, out of shame and also complete lethargy, was a bag of Whoppers and fries, and just to balance out the sodium content, a pair of Oreo McFlurries that we had to have about an hour before we arrived at my aunt's house in New York.

But our biggest question was not how many bags we could squeeze into the car or how many calories we could stuff into our sedentary day. Many years of experience have left us feeling confident that the answer to both is: A Lot. We were mostly worried about Matilda, who is becoming more vocal and alert and opinionated about how she spends her days. And while she loves to sleep in the car, we weren't sure if she would handle an entire day of being strapped down without a change of scenery.



She was...a total rockstar. These are all pictures Joshua took when I was driving and he was sitting in the backseat expecting her to wake up on the crabby side of life - instead, she was all sunshine and miracles.



Incidentally, this is how Joshua was even able to sit in the backseat - we strapped all that junk into the front seat. Because it weighed as much as a large child, we literally had to buckle it in to stop the fasten seatbelt alarm from repeatedly dinging off. We travel so light and efficient!

Matilda did have a brief breakdown as we were driving through that All-America city Buffalo, NY (no idea what qualifies Buffalo as so apple pie, but there are signs everywhere proudly boasting this status), but she also fell back asleep quickly once we started playing her favorite tune:



Am I advocating that your baby is lulled to sleep by the Glee Warblers singing Katy Perry? No. Is it totally creepy to be singing "put your hands on me in my skin tight jeans" as part of a desperate attempt to quiet a hollering child? Yes. But for some reason, we stumbled upon the fact that this song puts Matilda into a daze, and for the road trip at least, we decided to just go with it. If you have a suggestion of more lyrically appropriate music for an infant, maybe in the male acapella style, we are taking suggestions.

One of the things we've always done on road trips is read books out loud. Technically, I read them and Joshua listens while he drives, which keeps him from falling asleep and me from noticing how much he tailgates, and all in all this keeps our trips from turning into a slugfest. We weren't sure if that would work out on this trip because we didn't know how much baby-soothing we could expect. But thanks to our sleepy backseat traveler, we made it almost a hundred pages into this new Bill Bryson book:



It's a little bit rambling, and I would recommend some of his other books more highly, but it is funny and informative and I'm sure we will get 100 more pages knocked off on the way back.

We decided to take this road trip now when Matilda is still wee, mostly so all my family could meet her in this adorable stage of life, but also because we were hoping a sleepy infant would handle two days on I-90 much better than a finicky older baby. I know we'll end up doing it again at that point, but the 'practice run' wasn't anywhere near as horrible as we'd expected. We actually had a lot of fun.



Which is why we ended up having the time and energy to take a million silly, artsy pictures of us driving, including the always important feet-on-the-dash shot. And the lesser known diaper-bag-on-the-floor shot. And the witty no-I'm-not-looking while-I-drive shot.

Oh, we crack ourselves up. When Matilda is old enough to realize that twelve hours in the car isn't actually the world's longest and most comfortable nap, we are probably going to annoy her at least as much as she annoys us.

PS: coming soon - pictures with Matilda's Gramma and Grampa, uncles, and about a hundred doting relatives. Also, Baby Care on the Road: We Can Cloth Diaper Our Way Across the Country.