We opted to drive instead of fly for several reasons. One was cost of plane tickets and just the pain of flying with a 1 year old. We live a bit remote so our only options for flying are connecting somewhere larger like Charlotte or driving to Charlotte or Richmond and flying direct. I flew with Jordyn by myself when we were moving from San Diego but she was much smaller and rode the whole way in her Ergo carrier. And we only required the one seat where as this time we would have had to pay for three. Another reason was we knew she would be getting some large presents and it was just easier to bring them all back in the car. My parents are also getting ready to renovate their house and gave us all sorts of things (including a huge storm door) that we also had to bring back.
Yes I rode almost the whole way home squashed like that...Don't recommend it.
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| Don't look at me! |
The first leg of the trip went great! We had planned on stopping in Tennessee for the night but we got there way ahead of schedule and realized that because we had left at 5am we could be in Dallas before midnight if we kept going so we drove straight on through. The drive back was a little bit harder. About half way through our time in Dallas, a lot of us (including Beau and I) came down with a stomach virus so no one was feeling great. We left later than we had going so we stopped in Memphis for the night and took our time getting home. Needless to say we were VERY glad to get home!
I did some homework on ways to survive a road trip with a 1 year old and I got some products/advice that definitely made the trip a lot easier/better!
The first thing I did was clean her carseat, which we will review in a different post but it is a Graco 4-1, and install her new head support strap. We got the No Nods strap off Amazon and it worked great! She is a little small for it (it sometimes goes over her eyes which made her mad) but it kept her head from flopping forward and is something she can continue to grow into.
The next thing we did was to install our new iPad holder.
We got the Go Gear holder from Walmart and we love it! We looked at a bunch of different ones online and found this one by accident. The best part of this one is it works with any kind or size of smartphone and tablets. It also fit over her mirror. She is still rear facing and the mirror we have works well but is a pain to take on and off so I was looking for one that could fit over it. The straps were long enough to fit perfectly over the mirror and part of the straps are also elastic which helped as well.
We downloaded a whole season of Peppa Pig episodes off of Amazon prime onto my iPad and just played them on loop while she was awake. We don't usually let her watch that much TV but when your stuck in the car, you will do whatever you have to to keep them happy! She was pretty happy with Peppa most of the time but after a while would loose interest. I happened to have a few episodes of My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding on there from my last flight and she was quite happy with that!
We tried a ton of different sippy cups before the trip, trying to find one that didn't leak. She likes to throw them and so many that we tried would pop open or dribble all over the floor. I heard about the Camelbak Eddy kids bottles from Brittneyandbaby on YouTube who mentioned that her 1 year old liked to drink out of her 3 year olds bottle so she got him one. I decided to give it a go and sure enough, it worked! She loves it and it is not only sturdy enough to stand up to her but doesn't leak at all. So that was our cup of choice for the drive. It also fits well in the diaper bag bottle holder and the cup holder on her car seat.
Another little gem I found, also from Brittneyandbaby, was the Munchkin snack cup. It has a silicone top with cuts in it that allow the little one to get their hand into the cup for the snack but helps keep the snacks from going everywhere if they drop it. While this cup doesn't keep snacks in if its turned upside down and shaken, it does do a good job if its dropped or thrown.
The last thing was the pacifier clip/strap that we always keep in the car. She only gets her pacifier when she is in bed or the car. We've had the strap for a while but I'm always glad to not have to chase it all over the car when she throws it. And now that she has learned to put it into her mouth on her own, she can always find it in her seat.
I've left links below for all the products listed!
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