Sunday, March 9, 2008

Day 169 - Road Trip: Take 2


We just completed a whirlwind weekend trip up to Santa Clara for Lisa's brother's wedding (I'll post all about the wedding on Tuesday). It was an easier trip in the sense that this is the second time we've done it, and we didn't have to pack up as much. But it was a difficult trip because it was a quick trip and the babies are more humanish.

The last time we drove up to Northern California was at the end of December; the kids were three months old. They were just little tiny blobs that needed to sleep and eat. Although only three months have past, these little blobs are verging on becoming actual people now. They smile when they're happy, they cry when they want something, and they get angry when you drop them. This made the trip a little more difficult.

On our drive up, we decided not to wake them up to feed and change their diapers. On our first road trip, we stopped two hours into our drive. It was a bit disastrous because the kids wouldn't drink the formula because it was too cold, and attempting to breastfeed twins in the front seat of a car proved only one thing: breast milk does not wipe streak-free off car windows.

Our new plan was to let the kids dictate when we would need to pull over. We left Los Angeles on Friday around 10:30am. And the kids didn't wake up once so we got to Santa Clara around 3pm. There were a few times the kids got a little fussy, but we just popped a pacifier laced with sominex into their mouths and off to Slumberland they went.

The one big mistake I made driving up was that I assumed we would have to pull over for the kids. In other words, I did not monitor my liquid intake. Four hours into the trip, my bladder could no longer hold back a grande coffee and two bottles of water. I was gritting my teeth and shaking my legs hoping I would make it far enough to pull into a gas station. I even thought that if it got really bad I could always stuff a diaper down my pants and go for it (there was no way the tube sock was going to soak up all that pee). Thankfully, a gas station appeared and my bladder cried tears of joy...which eventually turned into pee that exited through my wee-wee hole.

I won't go into the details of the wedding day yet, but I will say that we decided not to go to the rehearsal dinner on Friday. Lisa and I figured that keeping the kids up late two nights in a row wouldn't sit too well with them.

Cutting to the drive back home on Sunday, the entire Ichikawa clan was exhausted and screwed up even more by daylight savings. Once again, we did not stop at all despite the fact that Emma woke up and cried the last thirty minutes of the trip. But most importantly, I learned my lesson and limited my liquid intake. In lieu of water, I ate a bunch of bran muffins and prunes. Long story short...the diaper down the pants did not work.

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