Our 24 hour vacation

This one time we drove from Baltimore to North Carolina to hang out for 24 hours.

Like, we stayed in NC for literally 24 hours. 

Our good friends from college live there. We used to visit all the time, and then we all had babies.

Beautiful, photogenic babies.

It's been way too long since we visited, so I decided we were going, come hell or high water, before the baby comes and we never travel ever again. Since we have a three day weekend for President's Day, and we are getting close to the point where I'll be humongous and unable to travel, it was now or never. We were all going to have a romantic Valentine's Day weekend together.

We left Saturday morning, because I still have nightmares about the one time we tried to travel after bedtime. It was like Ramsay Bolton level of torture. We arrived about 5pm Saturday night, and immediately enjoyed a relaxing Mexican meal out with our other friend, and three kids ages two and under. Entertainment included, but was not limited to: drinks being spilled, vomiting episodes, and general chaos. 

Then we came home and put the babies right to bed. HA. Kidding. Like babies go right to bed. Is that something babies do? 

In the grand toddler tradition, Dalton isn't exactly a huge fan of sleeping in new and strange places. He will NOT go to sleep ever if I'm anywhere in his sight, because like Aerosmith, he doesn't want to miss a thing. He suffers from FOMO (fear of missing out). BAD. He was asleep in the bed cuddling with Eric, but apparently not deeply enough, because he woke up when I came in and was like YES IT'S PLAYTIME. Long story short we eventually got him to sleep at like 10:30pm with me hiding next to the bed, on the floor out of sight, and Eric pinning him to his chest. Parenting win. I'm starting to feel really bad that friends take the time to set up pack and plays when we visit because they are pretty much useless. Then this described the rest of our night.

Cosleeping = NOSLEEPING

A combination of YAY CUDDLING I LOVE THIS and being awoken from a peaceful slumber by the 13th kick in the head that hour.

In one of my short bouts of sleep, I had a dream that our friends kicked us out due to the impending snow storm (which at that point we all thought was just going to be a minor dusting). I told everyone about it in the morning and we all laughed. Then we checked the weather for real and they were like hmmm yeah actually you're going to need to leave. 

It would be utterly ridiculous to drive all day Saturday then leave Sunday morning, so we stayed, hung out, did Valentine's Day photo shoots.

I mean....I just can't. 

And just because I'm already that parent.

We moved our romantic Valentine's Day dinner up to 3pm. More of a linner, really. Coke marinated ribs and corn fritters. Amazing.

Our little Valentines

Then, since we were already facing my nightmare of driving after bedtime, we met up with my cousin and her family on our way out. And took zero pictures. Such a fail. But she has a blog, so you can look at her adorable kids and imagine them in Panera with Dalton.

Technically our moms are the cousins, but more importantly she has a 6 week old and her son will be two next month (exactly 6 months older than Dalton to the day!) so we got to see the #twoundertwo lifestyle first hand. Seems like a piece of cake! At least, for an hour, in Panera, with both parents present. I'm sure that's a completely accurate representation. Still, it was awesome to get to meet her family and spend some time together!

We left about 5:30. We originally thought we would just get a cheap hotel somewhere halfway in between, but upon closer examination of the radar (all teachers are also amateur meteorologists), it appeared that our options were either make it home Sunday night, or finish driving in a snowstorm. In the south. At rush hour. In the DC area. Which pretty much meant that no amount of toddler screaming would force us to stop, so I was braced for the worst.

I planned to drive for just an hour or two (since 6 hours of being a prego passenger is just not fun in terms of nausea/back pain) then let Eric take over. Dalton crashed not too long into the trip. And that's when I developed super human strength. I drove from 4:30-9:30 without stopping (aka two hours past my usual bedtime), then we stopped just long enough to fill the gas tank, switch places, and continue home. That's right, at 27 weeks pregnant, I made it from Panera in Durham, NC to our house, without peeing. SIX HOURS. Because parents will do literally anything to avoid waking a sleeping baby. And through some miracle, our sleeping baby slept the entire trip. AND went back to sleep in his crib without a peep when we got home, which has never once happened before. At least, we think so. We forgot the baby monitor camera in NC, so for all we know he played silently in there all night, but we didn't hear anything and he woke up happy.

It snowed all day today before switching over to freezing rain, so we were beyond glad that we decided to leave early. Plus, since Dalton slept the whole trip, I didn't feel like I missed any time with him, and Eric and I got to have hours of adult conversation.

And that was officially our last little trip as a family of three. I plan to stay put until well after this baby joins us.

Have you ever made a trip where travel time nearly exceeds your time in the actual destination? Sadly, this is not our first experience with that, but having a toddler adds a whole new level to it. Still, worth it!