We survived twelve hours in the car with Rachel. Actually, that twelve hours turned out to be more like fifteen or sixteen hours...
With diaper changes, breastfeeding, snuggling, and kicking, pit stops really aren't pit stops anymore. They are more like a crater stop or a grand canyon stop.
Traveling without a baby is easy. You stop the car. Everyone gets out and does their business and before you know it, you're on the road again. With a baby, everyone gets out and does their business while taking turns holding the baby. Usually the baby will need another diaper change right before you leave, no matter how many were given during the stop. Quite often Rachel messed her pants five minutes onto the road. So, poor girl, we usually made her just sit there in her mess until we stopped again. Once we had to pull over to a truck stop though because she was just too miserable to continue.
The trip was actually pretty pleasant. The weather was wonderful, the roads were clear, and Rachel was a happy girl for most of the way.
Around Claresholm she started acting up, so I talked really nice to her and we had a contest to see who could guess the number of kilometers until Nanton. Rachel guessed 4 and I guessed 13. Rachel won. She was rather upset when I told her that we still had twenty minutes left and so she cried all the way to High River and out to Abra's house.
She was happy to meet her cousins but was sad when we left them--that meant she had to get in the car seat again.
We headed over to the Richards' to spend the night. Their house is huge! We are staying in their basement apartment, which is really nice and roomy.
It felt warm when we first got inside--because it was so cold outside (about -16 C, which isn't even cold yet). However, when we were getting ready for bed, we noticed how very chilly it was. I wore my fleece jacket to bed and put a hat on Rachel. We had a whole pile of blankets on us and were still freezing.
In the morning we checked the thermastat. It was set to 53 degrees Fahrenheit! We turned it up to 68 degrees and it's a lot nicer now.
So, we're here. We're safe. We're warm (at least when we're inside).
Yay for Canada! Take lots of pictures, especially if it snows. I think we got a little tiny bit of snow last night... or an extremely heavy frost! :) That's about as good as it gets, though we actually sort of got stuck in a very heavy snowfall last year! Certainly not a blizzard by Canadian standards, but it was close enough by English standards, considering the kind of roads we were on and the circumstance. It was fun. I was almost reminded of home. :) Yah... 50-something degrees at night is pretty cold... even for me with my insane body thermostat!
ReplyDeleteI know how you feel. Driving with babies is not all that fun. We have a number of times and just when it traveling seemed to get easy with Ian, Maggie came along and makes it hard again. I hope you had fun in Canada and that the ride home was good.
ReplyDeleteI MISS MISS MISS YOU already! I Love LOVE LOVE Rachel!!!! I hope she doesn't forget me :) That would make me sad :( Thankyou guys sooooooo much for coming up to Deklan's Baptisim I apprecaiate all you did for me thank you again! I love you all triple times love love love you! Hope you get home safe!!!
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