On suffering through the road trip

15 minutes into most road trips, my daughter and I are about equally interested in getting out, and getting out NOW. Addison is not a container baby, and she lets that fact be known. Loudly. I sometimes see parents whose infants are fast asleep in a portable car seat in the basket of a grocery cart, or maybe the little tyke is slumbering delicately in its mother's arms while mom chats casually with a friend. How nice that would be. It's probably good I have no idea how to put a car together (much less a car seat), because a rocket-powered escape route for my daughter is probably one of the first things I'd get started on. It wouldn't be child abuse; I'd give her a parachute.

I'm pretty jealous of the parents whose kids mostly sit quietly in the back seat, reading books, or singing songs to themselves, or napping (oh, that our daughter would nap in the car! It makes me tear up a little imagining how beautiful that would be).

We get on the road again tomorrow. It'll be about a 7.5 hour trip back to California. It's times like these that I wish I had a prescription for Zoloft or Xanax, or some other med with a strong Z sound.

At least she's pretty cute whenever she's out of her car seat. It's her saving grace. Here she is teasing us:

It's like she's saying, "see dad, this is what road trips could be like. Calmly reading the paper, all proper and sophisticated. I mean, IF I WERE A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT KID."

Here she is faking a nap. That's the best we can hope for.

 

And this is about two seconds later. That is not a cry of joy. And as long as we're in the car, it's pretty constant.

 

I don't suppose I can blame her. I wouldn't want to be strapped into a stress-position torture device like this either. Don't worry kid, we'll be home soon. By all that's good and decent, please let us get home soon.