Has anyone driven a long distance recently? We have to travel back to DH's home state in August and if we fly it's $928 round trip for all three (not including we would have to rent a car for the week!). Or the other option is to drive 12 hours! Someone told me we should start our drive when DS goes to bed so hopefully he would sleep most of the time...any thoughts?
Re: Long distance car trip with a toddler
~*~*May 2013 Moms Website*~*~
We did a long car trip back in December, and will be doing another one in April. The trick for us was to buy new "car toys". These were things that DS hadn't had exposure to and wasn't bored with playing with already. We let him pick them out and it was a huge success! He love things with buttons and sounds, so he picked out the Touch Magic Learning Bus by Leapfrog and the B. Woofer Guitar (both purchased at Target). These were awesome because he'd switch back and forth between playing them, and was able to keep himself occupied.
https://shop.leapfrog.com/leapfrog/jump/Touch-Magic%22-Learning-Bus/productDetail/Learning-Toys-(3-5-yrs.)/TOUCHMAGIC19203/cat580010
https://justb-byou.com/toys/lively/woofer/
We have driven twice to Orlando from Huntsville, Alabama {about 11 hours}. We always travel at night, we leave here at about 5pm, stop for dinner at 7pm and then he zonks out about 8-9pm and sleeps the rest of the way. We did this when he was 12mo and again at 18 mo, we'll do it again when he is 26 mo. It seems to get easier because he's more adjusted to it now.
I know a family with 4 kids who starts their travels at night so the kids sleep through a lot of it. Not a bad idea if the parents can get enough rest to be able to drive all night.
I took my daughter to Virginia (from Michigan)--I think it was like 16 hours or something?--but that was last September so she was younger. But it really wasn't that bad. She fussed more on the way home than on the way there. But she also took two naps then regularly anyway so she did sleep a lot. I just had snacks for her and tried to talk to her and stuff while she was awake.