Anyone taking a road trip this weekend? Forget "I Spy", "20 Questions" and that mind-numbing game about Grandpa's trunk and all it's alphabetized contents.
The only family car game you should play is NickMom's "Road Trip Bingo". If you get stuck in traffic at the same time you run out of snacks, you have a very good chance of winning!
You don't even have to interact with your kids— you can play all by yourself!
"G, Diaper Blowout in the Middle of Nowhere" anyone?
Please do me the honor of sharing your worst "child in car" story below.
Mine was the time I fed a nine-month-old Mazzy both milk and orange juice as part of several misguided attempts to get her to stop crying. Then we hit a bump and she started throwing up orange neon foam like some sort of rabid alien baby, causing me to start to screaming like I was auditioning for a Wes Craven movie and Mike to freak out and pull over.
Your turn!
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Three more NickMom posts that made me laugh:
Top Nine Passive-Aggressive Things to Say to Your Husband During a Road Trip
WANTED: Dora's Mom Seeks Babysitter
Top Nine Things Kids on Sitcoms Never Seem to Do
This makes me more than nervous about a 15-hour flight we’ll be undertaking soon. A car, you can stop and get out. A plane? Not so much…
Hah! Good one!
These are great!
I would lose, though… the feeling guilty about a fast food lunch… If I bought my kids a happy meal, they’d be ecstatic! It would keep them quiet and behaving themselves for at least 10 minutes.
10 wonderful, glorious, minutes for me to savor… Nope. No guilt there! 😉
They totally forgot this one,
“Child screams at the top of lungs nonstop for two hours.”
Yeah. ‘Nuff said.
We were on our way home from Maine and we stopped at one of the New Hampshire roadside liquor stores to take the boys to the bathroom (for those who don’t know,these are like a combo between a rest stop and a liquor outlet mall). Pretty gross bathroom. When we got back in the car, I turned around and saw my 4yo speculatively licking THE BOTTOM OF HIS SHOE.
Single mom here – and I drove, by myself, with my 2 year old, from Austin, TX, to Baton Rouge LA, where my BFF and her kids lived. Basically, the entire plan was to go, leave our kids with her mom, and “do” New Orleans. (Shut up, I was young) – Anyway, we successfully made the trip without much drama – BEST ROAD TRIP TOY EVER? Roll of blue painter’s tape – anyway – we got to Baton Rouge and my son let loose with a WALL of vomit. Just.. massive amounts. Things I ate while I was pregnant with him came up. It was terrifying. Pulled into the nearest Target, stripped him naked, threw his clothes and his carseat in the dumpster, and took him, naked, into the store and bought him a new outfit and a new carseat. $200 well spent, IMO.
Completely and totally understand. When my toddler threw up the most vile blueberry filled vomit all over her room, and didn’t cry to let us know, so I was great with cold, smelly, staining vomit all over her, her bed, her carpet … I seriously considered just putting a For Sale sign “as is” on my front lawn. In my nine plus years of parenting I have never experienced anything so foul. Totally worth starting over ( note: child would have come with me of course. Bathtubs are wonderful things. Primarily the carpet I was willing to leave over 😉
We were on a road trip from Michigan to N. Carolina and it was the day after a large snow storm. Virginia and N. Carolina were actually getting snow. After sitting on a blocked highway for 3 hours, taking a detour, and hitting another shut down highway, we took to the back roads of Virginia, through the mountains, in a snow storm. Oh, I forgot to mention that my then six year old had a raging ear infection (that we didn’t know about) as we were driving through the mountains, and was getting car sick. It was 20 something degrees and we were driving with our windows down to get him some fresh air. The entire trip should have taken 12 hours, and we were on about hour 15 at that point.
Hm. Mine involves vomit too. Father’s Day breakfast when our first was almost a year. Pulling into our driveway – motion sickness hit from her first just turned around to forward facing carseat car ride. Vomited all over herself and her seat. Convenient? Yes, we were home. Funny? Kind of yes as was all over her “I love Daddy” T-Shirt. Moral of story? Plan trips well to not coincide with the Big Car Seat To Forward Facing event as apparently motion sickness is common when toddlers adjusting! So have to travel at very specified times until they adjust.
That has to be one of the funniest and grossest things I have read in my life!!
Oh my god! I totally forgot that the first time Mazzy rode in her brand new forward-facing Britax carseat when she turned two, she threw up EVERYWHERE!!!
Totally didn’t make the connection that it was because she was facing forward for the first time until now. I figured it was just incredibly bad luck.
We had to take the whole thing apart and pour pots of water on it on our twelfth floor balcony. I pity the people on the sidewalk.
Throwing it out wasn’t an option as it was brand new and I don’t think the store would have taken it back even if we screamed, “But we bought it YESTERDAY!!!!”
Best line ever in all the vomit talk “Things I ate while I was pregnant with him came up” Priceless!
I just threw up.
Mine is vomit related as well. Babysitting our nephew, who unbeknownst to us, gets carsick. We take a windy road up to a vista. On the way down, he pukes. Which causes my two kids to gag and then my daughter pukes as well. Nothing says awesome outing like contagion vomiting.
oh yeah!! I wrote a whole post about it, in fact. http://frugalistablog.com/2012/05/07/its-all-fun-and-games-until-somebody-pukes/
Mine involves a plane trip with our first boy, does that count? The air pressure had a vacuum effect on his bowels, so that the 10 diapers I took with us on a 6 hr flight were almost gone by hour 4. I finally gave him to my husband to deal with, who had at this point been leisurely watching movies and taking naps (the airline separated us, and the changing table was in 1st class, thus smaller than the usual 10 x 12 size). My husband sighs (as if he had been getting up and down for the last 4 hrs) and takes the stuff. It was taking a loooong time, and the FA came up to me to let me know he had dropped the wipes on the way in. So he let me put my arm in (all that would fit in that bathroom) and I see Will smooshed into the corner, screaming. Poop? It had fallen out of the diaper onto the floor, where my husband not only had stepped in it, but knelt down in it to look for the wipes. Once he figured out he didn’t have the wipes, he looked at the diaper and couldn’t find the poop. I quickly went back to my seat, trying not to laugh out loud. I apologized to the FA and informed him it may be a while. He brought Will out 15 or so minutes later, sans pants but clean. He had to go back in to detox the bathroom. I still cry with laughter when I tell this story out loud. He still tells me it’s not that funny….
Last year my husband and I both came down with the stomach flu. We were sick for 2 days but somehow, we thought, that our 6 month old son didn’t get it too. I was driving my son to daycare on the 3rd day glanced in my rear view to the car seat mirror just as my son decided it was time to vomit. It was like the exorcist- And I caught it all in the mirror! I had to drive the 5 more minutes to daycare with my son covered in vomit just to bathe him and turn around and go home!
I took my child to visit friends/family for a week when he was 2. It was just the two of us. The first hour of the car ride, he non-stop screamed bloody murder. You know that brain-piercing, eye-twitch-invoking, hysterical, overtired screech of a toddler’s voice? Yeah. ONE HOUR of this while being confined in a small car, with no help. All while driving through heavy traffic on the interstate through a major city. He finally fell asleep, thank GOD, and was out the rest of the trip. I know, it could have been so much worse, but I needed to drink heavily after that ride. Before the next trip, I bought a portable DVD player.
Oh. Oh. Oh. You win. I need a shower just from reading that. And antibiotics.
This is hilarious. My favorite one is about the car smelling like a mix of feet, farts, and French fries. I honestly can’t think of a single horrific incident with Lil’ Bit in the car, but driving from Richmond to Hilton Head with her wasn’t too fun (normally an 8-hour trip, it took more like 12).
Since we have often driven between southern and northern California, through three kids there are way too many nightmares. Suffice to say I have been in situations simular to the one I fictionalized in my novel “On a Hot August Afternoon”.
it is the word “specutatively”. That is what separates writers from story-telling geniuses.
Yep … ours was a rear-to-forward model, so wasn’t new. I would have threw it out and started over, but apparently my husband is more frugal than I. Or sane. Whichev’ But yes, for baby two future reference, when you do the big switch, don’t drive when they have an empty or full stomach. Feed them then wait 30-60 min. It was motion sickness for sure ( more than once) as would turn pale, cold, clammy, be sick, then be totally fine.
Umm and thank you for not chastising me for turning my bean around in her 11th month – I work for a branch of Canadian government, know the safety carseat regulations, realize longer rear facing is better but she had hit every milestone for forward facing except actual age and was only a couple weeks shy of that legality;, and is older so was back in the day. No no, not the day when we would sit them in paper boxes on the floor or back of the volkswagon with no seats at all, or sit in the front seat from age three. That’s just crazy, what parent would do that and expect their kid to survive? ((Hi Mom!!)) 🙂
My daughter used to do self induced vomiting. So every afternoon on our hour commute home, she would gag herself to the point of puking then fall asleep in it. The Dr told us to let her in it so she would eventually grow to dislike it and stop. Worst month ever!
The best part was I was talking to my dad on the way home and was all like “UH NOT AGAIN” and he laughed. Well she did it to his carseat when we visited. You know paybacks and all.
That would definitely be the time Ella threw up my purse which I had stupidly placed on the floor at her feet! Never made that mistake again.
While my husband was in tech school for the second time, I went home to my parents house by myself with my son who was 2 at the time. It was an 18 hour drive from southern New Mexico, to St. Louis, MO. About 2 hours into the drive, my son got violently ill. I stopped the car and cleaned him up and changed him, then got back on the road. About 20 minutes after that, he had horrible diarreah, that was a blow out in his diaper. Then as I was looking for somewhere to pull over and clean him and the seat up, he threw up again. I ended up having to take the cover off of the seat, and stop at a Walmart to buy trash bags, paper towels, Clorox wipes, new clothes for him, medicine, a beach towel for his carseat, and more diapers. It was the messiest, smelliest, most horrible road trip I have ever taken in my life. He continued with the diarreah and vomiting for the entire 2 day trip out there. It was horrible.
My middle, Logan, has trouble with altitude and car trips. I remember when he was two, driving to Yosemite with my brother, my oldest, and Logan in the car. Logi had inhaled a banana and a gogurt before we left, and was happily sucking on a bottle through Oakhurst. We passed through the gates uneventfully, and had made it halfway to the valley floor, when he started LOUDLY yaaking and snarf-coughing in the backseat. Then the SMELL hit: rotten banana milkshake vomit, mixed with diarrhea.
My brother is extremely sensitive to other peoples’ vomit. I vividly remember him beginning to gag, rolling down the window, leaning out and vomiting down the side of my car at 40 mph on a two-lane road, with my parents and friends from Germany in the car behind us getting a front-row-seat view.
The carseat was full. His clothes were full. The diaper was full of poop AND vomit. It leaked on the carseat. The side of the black car was etched by stomach vomit. I had to pay a serious wad of cash for water and febreeze to attempt a clean-up. It was an epic fail for the friends who had come all the way from GERMANY to see Yosemite (and us of course)!
I’ve got another!
I had a new baby (8 weeks I think he was), a 2-year old and a 5-year old. Picked ’em all up from daycare on a lovely 110-degree afternoon, in a car whose AC had just gone belly-up.
My older boys decided it was a good idea to take their sandals/shoes off, and wave their feet around screaming “TINKY FEE INNA CAW!!” right around the time the baby decided to fill his diaper with his own special brand of swamp muck.
Let me tell you – kid-feet funkify at @ 65 degrees in any shoe.
AAAAAND – then the farting began. It was a concert. It was beautifully gag-inducing (on my part). It made my eyes water and my bowels clench. And it’s only gotten worse as they’ve gotten older. (shudder) 3 boys.
When my daughter was a baby, we were flying to New York with her and my two-year-old son to see their grandparents.
My father kindly offered to drop us at LAX, but we insisted that he use our car because of the gas, mileage, wear-and-tear, blah blah blah.
As we were pulling into the drop-off zone, my baby had a blow-out and not to be outdone, my son loaded his diaper too. I quickly changed them in the back of the car but we were being rushed to pull away from the unloading zone and late for our plane so I figured my dad would/could throw away the dirty diapers…
I was wrong.
When he picked us up at the airport a week later, the diapers were STILL IN THE CAR.
No joke. My dad can’t smell.
Obviously.
Our parents live about 70 miles from us. We go to visit 1 to 2 times a month. When my kids were little we would take advantage of driving back home at nap time. My daughter, if woken up earlier than she wanted to be awake, would wake up screaming, flailing and hitting the back of the seat (waking up her twin brother, who fell inevitably fell asleep about 15 minutes before she woke up). This would go on until we arrived home. It was an awesome year or so.
I HATE when toddler drops something and I can’t reach it and then I have to hear him whine about it the whole way home. The bright side is I hope I’m teaching him not to drop things anymore ;). My worst car experience also had to do with vomit. We had just pulled up to the daycare and he puked. It got into the car seat, back of the front seat, and floor. All over himself too. Luckily, I had 1 single tissue with me (oi). After that incident, I have a box of emergency clean up products in the trunk — paper towels, wipes, anti bac wipes, resolve. However, not that’s it’s summer, those wipes are freakin hot!
About 20 minutes into a 5-hour car trip, my 6yo daughter threw up her large, recently consumed banana/hot dog lunch. (Please note, she hasn’t been allowed to select her own lunch menu since then.) Luckily we found a fast food place relatively soon, but no amount of McDonald’s hand soap and hot hand-drier air can eliminate that smell. Also, 5 hours is a long time to be trapped in the car with it.
P.S. If you’re reading this, Lady in the McDonald’s restroom, I’m eternally grateful for the sympathetic look you gave me in the mirror. I think you saved me from a major meltdown that afternoon.
Our worst car trip was when Brooke (2) was a baby. (Was 15 months at the time)
On the highway, in a traffic jam, Brooke filled her diaper up with #2, and we had to wait an hour to get out of the traffic jam and we had to stop at a rest stop to get her changed. (We quickly left that rest stop because poop exploded all over changing table when I tried to throw the diaper away)
Allie our middle child, then announced she was hungry. We gave her puréed carrots (she wasn’t a baby but was quite fond of puréed carrots at the time) even though she fit in the age requirment (1-4) the puréed packet carrots came back up in the form of vomit. (They were cheap and my hubby told me it was to good to be true, I shoud’ve belived him)
Top to it all off, Joesph (our oldest) yelled “BATHROOM” so we pulled over at the nearby rest stop, and he had diarrhea and vomited for the next hour.
Thankfully, we were two minutes away from Gam-Gam’s house. (My grandmother’s house, and their great grandmother’s house) so we had Joesph resting in the guest room.