Kill me now

When our oldest was younger (and we only had her), we used to drive 10+ hours at least 3 times a year to visit family. It sucked, to be sure, because aside from being subject to puking if she was in the car longer than 2 hours (as were our other 2, seems it's genetic), she was also inclined to getting ear infections.

All.the.fucking.time.

Between the ages of 2 months to 2 years, this child had roughly 10 ear infections. She rarely went 1 month without being on some sort of antibiotic.

Needless to say, traveling long distances were hard on all of us. Effectively ruining any family car trips in the future. Not that we didn't end up all piling into the car hundreds of times in the ensuing years for long ass trips. We just assumed that it was going to suck and tried to plan accordingly.

We thought we had the whole "prepare for WWIII and then be grateful when it's only a leaky diaper on the side of freeway".

Then we had the last 2.

Oy.

These two children have forged a whole new meaning to "disastrous road trip". I've noted that they're 2 years apart, but with the middle one having special needs, it's really like having twins. They're so close in size that I get asked that all the fucking time. Family members add to this by buying them matching outfits, and of course, I dress them in said outfits on the same day more often than not. Not because I want them to be mistaken for twins, but for it's ease of identification for me, should one of them get lost.

And as the middle one has gotten lost on more than one occasion, I'm not about give up this practice, no matter how much I loathe it.

Anyhoo, back to my point. Car trips. With small children. In short, they suck ass.

The tween diva was at a friend's house for the night, so the hubs decided we needed to get out of the house and in the car for a short trip to a mall about an hour away. Why? Because we're masochists. That's why. He figured that the kids would be better maintained in their car seats, listening to music and being lulled to sleep so we could have a nice peaceful drive.

I think I've mentioned how often we lie to ourselves, right?

I have to say, the trip down there went relatively well. Hubs doesn't allow food/drinks in the hands of humans younger than we are in his truck, so they were behaving fairly well since they weren't being pacified by snacks. They each took a small nap and we figured they would be well rested by the time we got there.

You'd think, as there were two of us, and two of them, that maintaining them would have been a relatively easy task. Yeah, right. Trying to get these two to go anywhere they don't wanna is like wrestling monkeys covered in grease into a shoebox. No joke, as soon as we released them from their straightjackets (aka car seats), one of them ran directly towards an on-coming car, and the other threw themselves on the ground because apparently I was NOT the parent they wanted to be with.

And this was all before we got into the fucking mall.

I was honestly prepared to call it a day and get back in the damn truck. But, hubs wanted to try & salvage a decent family trip out of it. And, I have to admit, once we got inside, we had a fairly nice time. The girls had a fun time trying to con us into buying every book/toy/snack they saw, but we were able to con them into being happy with a cookie and some milk. Although we almost came to blows over the entire collection of "Backyardigans" stuffed toys that they threw fits over asked us politely for.

Have I mentioned we're potty training them both at the same time? Why yes, we ARE insane, thanks for asking! :D So, of course, a trip to the "Family bathroom" was in order at least once. We aren't completely stupid, and had put both of them in pull-ups before the trip. One was wet, the other wasn't, they both peed. While I was wiping one of them on the toilet, hubs was washing the other's hands, after which he was putting things back into the diaper bag, and the child with the freshly clean hands decided to play in the pool of nasty ass water in the middle of the bathroom. When I jumped to stop her, the kid on the potty decided to unroll half of the toilet paper onto the floor, which has now become a wet lumpy mess due to the water on the floor. We walked out of the bathroom, and I asked myself Why the hell don't malls sell alcohol?

By the time we got a late lunch, they were beyond tired and slowly coming apart at the seams. We had one more fit over who would sit in which car seat, which unfortunately continued until we were 10 miles down the road. I think they both fell asleep within 25 minutes, allowing the hubs and I to finally relax, just in time to pull into the driveway and have them both wake up.

At least no one puked right?