Road trip

So Marshall and I packed up the kids and headed out to Rocklin to visit his family. We are going to be out here for 10 or so days, and spend some time up at their cabin near Tahoe. My main plan is to force people to take me fishing. It should be a great trip!

We are also potty training right now.

On Monday, I decided I was done with diapers. We were down to our last few, and I didn't want to buy any more. I know I have written a little in the past about our struggles with potty training, but it has been bad. She knows how the use the potty- she has understood for a long long time. It was a matter of wills, really. So I just decided I was done. She would be in underwear full time, and that was it.

It went surprisingly well. We had a few accidents here or there, but in general she was dry throughout the day and night.

Then on Wednesday I panicked.

We were leaving at 8am the next morning on a 12 hour drive- in underwear. I had been brave that week and ventured out 2 or 3 times for an hour or so with my underwear-clad toddler. But 12 hours in a car? Driving through the middle of nowhere?I went back and forth for a while whether to put her in pull-ups just for the drive, or whether to hold firm to my resolve to be done with them forever. Would I undo all the progress we had made? How would it even be possible to potty train across Nevada with a toddler whose full-bladder-warning system had a 20 second limit?

But I went for it. I brought a dozen or so dry pair of underwear in the diaper bag, a bag to put wet clothes in, some absorbent pads for under her butt in the car seat, and the training potty on the floor of the car.

And we set out.

About the time we got to the salt flats, she yelled "Mom! I have to go pee!" I pulled that car over on the side of the freeway as fast as I could, pulled open the slider, and plopped her on the little potty. Amazingly, she did her business! I dumped it in a nearby bush, and we continued on.

For about .17 of a mile.

Then, from the back, I heard "Mom! I have to go pee again!" I pulled back over again. This time, nothing.

We started driving again, and the same thing. Okay, I see the novelty of this. You have all the power to pull the car over with that declaration. I could see that this is going to be a long drive.

So I distracted.

Marshall and I have done the drive to northern California numerous times. And every time, I love when we get to the salt flats and there are hundreds of people's names written in stone on the white expanse. I have always wanted to do that! But usually we are driving that drive in the dead of winter, and it is much too cold to just jump out and carry rocks around for a half hour. But yesterday, I needed a distraction, and we were already parked at the salt flats.

A half hour later, we were dirty and sweaty, but I was really happy we did it and I look forward to forcing Marshall to let me do this each year.

We continued on our way, Carly's new found power-trip forgotten. And the trip went really well! We stopped twice to fuel the car, and each time she easily used the gas station bathroom. And we pulled over a number of times to use the little plastic potty at her feet.

At one point she called out the frantic words, and I hurriedly pulled the car over. She was already sitting on the potty doing her business when I heard, "Mommy, what's that?" I looked down, and I had parked right next to a roadkill fox.

Well, half a fox.

Gross.

It was right outside the slider door. I tried to block her view, not wanting to have the possibly upsetting conversation about cars + animals. But she was squirming to look around me, and not attending to the important task at hand. So I showed her the dead fox and explained that it was an animal that had died because it got hit by a car. And that is why we don't play near cars.

She thought about it for a moment, and then said "Oh, it's so sad that Dannon got hit by a car. Russ and Star are going to be so sad! They will cry!" I explained that Dannon wasn't a fox, and Dannon also wasn't dead.

The rest of the trip I got to hear about how sad Russ was because Dannon was roadkill.

Right before Rocklin, the I-80 passes through the Sierras. As we were heading down the pass, about 20 miles from Rocklin, we heard those words from the back seat: "Mom! I have to go pee!"

We had made it nearly 12 hours, countless bathroom breaks on the side of the road, and the apparent loss of Dannon, without an accident. But there was nowhere to pull over. The shoulder was too narrow, the interstate down to just 2 lanes between the faces of the mountainside. The 20 second grace period ended, and we heard "Oops, I am peeing now!" We made the decision to just finish the drive, and changed her once we got to Grandma and Grandpa's house.

So Carly's triumphant road trip ended in 20 minutes of wet misery. And it wasn't even her fault. I'm glad I decided to be brave and do the trip minus pull-ups. We'll see how the drive back goes.