Surviving Car Trips with Toddlers
We don't have a great track record of painless car travel with kids so I am definitely no expert in this arena. But with an upcoming 10ish-hour (if we're lucky) ride to the Outer Banks, I have been crowdsourcing and prepping for weeks now, and thought I'd share what I've come up with.
ACTIVITIES:
Aquadoodle (to replace our old one--would highly recommend! Just make sure you get an extra pen)
Water Wows (we bring these to church every week--also highly recommend)
Buckle toy (for Amelia, who is obsessed with buckles and zippers, and this has both!)
I'll also be bringing our Doodle Pro (another weekly church necessity for our non-nursery-goer child), washable markers, pipe cleaners (the girls love making flowers, bracelets and other creations out of them), toy cars, our tablet, and some books. I raided our library for DVDs and music CDs, too.
I also got each girl one of these travel trays to make coloring activities easier and hopefully more prolonged. And a friend is lending us two sets of kids' headphones--thank you Toni!
SNACKS:
raisins nut butter pouches + apples
nut butter + pretzel packs rice cakes
Somersaults fruit snacks
popcorn
pretzel sticks
cheese sticks crackers
applesauce pouches yogurt pouches (I freeze these ahead of time and they're thawed by the time we need them) carrot sticks
Despite our track record, I am feeling pretty positive about our upcoming journey, so I will report back and let you know if my preparations helped!
And my #1 rule I'm following this time around: Do not wake them early (4/5am) and assume they will go back to sleep in the car! See below for a 20-month-old Eloise (the last time we took this trip), who we woke up around 4:30 and SHE DID NOT GO BACK TO SLEEP!
More memory lane pictures from OBX 2015:
Do you have any car travel tips? Please enlighten me!
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