Think you (and your car) are ready for kids? Try these simple experiments to see if you’re really up to the task.
Photo via Flickr, user: Mads Boedker
Road trips with an infant
1. Do not sleep for one week prior to road trip. Sustain yourself with only coffee and spoonfuls of peanut butter.
2. Stop for food every two hours, even if you don’t feel hungry. Sit in the backseat and eat this food slowly, for a full 30 minutes. Drive 20 more minutes. Stop. Change your pants and possibly your shirt as well. Repeat until you arrive at your destination.
3. Collect bells, squeaky toys and anything else around your house that makes annoying, high-pitched songs. Play all at once until you consider it just normal background noise.
4. Sing one lullaby continuously for eight hours. Do NOT attempt to spice things up with a different tune. And don’t even think about finding relief in some so-called baby CD.
Road trips with a toddler
1. Unpack entire contents of your dresser, kitchen pantry and medicine cabinet. Load into car.
2. Buy bag of grapes. Cut each grape carefully into four parts. Cut apples, bananas, cheese and crackers all into same size bites.
3. Call friends, your mom, your husband and next door neighbor to exclaim about the fantastic bathroom you found during a pit stop that had a changing room, playground and antibacterial stations. Write a letter to the business owner thanking him for not making you change a diaper in a cramped bathroom stall on a disease infested plastic tray. Mark this spot on your map (while removing the pins for good restaurants and romantic scenic overlooks) and don’t EVER forget it.
Cars and kids
1. Save half your lunch and dump it across the floor of the backseat. Shove a half empty cup of milk under seat and forget about it for six months. Remember: the smell will pass.
2. Take full box of Ritz crackers. Smash into pieces in the backseat and then grind it into the upholstery with your shoe.
3. Place large box in middle backseat. Agree to drive your coworkers to lunch only to remember you can’t actually fit them in your car until they open the door and see the large box (and the ground up Ritz crackers).
4. Find that boy band CD you loved in middle school that now makes you cringe. Play it on repeat. For 18 years.
LWTK’s mommy blogger, Sarah, is attempting to be a good mama to little Henry, wife to Shea, full-time employee and part-time grad student all while avoiding making dinner from a box every night. In her non-existent free time, she’s running, eating popcorn and blogging about it all at The Gatsby Diaries.
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