Adventures in Traveling, Part 1

I am at grad school for the next week doing my first of four semester residencies. Because my little one isn't weaned yet, they let me bring him and a 'child care aide' who we'll call Maddie :)

Getting here was interesting.

We spent two days in the car, and what should have been a 16 hour trip took (if you don't count the hotel room semi-sleep time) approximately 21 hours. We took turns driving, and I honestly think we both prefer the driving to the time in the back seat with Owen. He did really well for some periods of time, and he slept a few times, too. But mostly he was pissed. I imagine his thought process to be something like this:

You guys suck! Why am I in this stupid seat again? You just took me out 8 minutes ago, and all I got to do was lay on my back and get a clean diaper before you threw me back in here?! Are you insane?!?!? Why do you hate me? Why do you torture me? LET ME OUT OF HERE YOU EVIL BITCHES! This is a severe injustice you are inflicting upon me. This is egregious. I demand satisfaction!! Fucking hell, this is so wrong!! I need to crawl and play and try to pull things down on my head and put things in my mouth all day, not sit wedged in a plastic seat with polyester lining! I HATE YOU!!!


And I totally agree with him. It's horrible and evil and mean, and I don't blame him for being totally miserable. Especially since he spent the first hour of the trip sitting in 2 inches of juice because his sippy cup leaked and I didn't know it. And he also spent an hour or so in a pile of poop diaper because it didn't smell and Maddie didn't know it was there. Poor little fella.

I will, of course, try to exact a little sympathy for me, since I got injured. Maddie, who is new to driving a stick shift vehicle, jolted the car while pulling out of a parking lot and I had already started nursing O, so he bit down and I screamed and he cried and I discovered my nipple was bleeding...

Not fun.