We’re finally all packed up, and everyone is buckled and already said their piece about how Mama’s driving (because I never choose to), and Daddy has his laptop open, ready to work.
We’re going to get moving, after two hours of trying.
That’s right. It takes two hours just to leave the house.
And then.
Then I turn on the car, and the gas light is on.
Son of a—
I know what this means. A stop. A stop that will turn into a potty break that will turn into five potty breaks that will turn into thirty minutes (or more!) of wasted time.
It’s only a three-hour trip. It will take us five.
When we stop, after I’ve huffed and puffed about how someone should fill up the car once in a while and why can’t whoever was driving it last just fill it up before the gas light comes on (pretty sure it was me, that day I was running late to get dinner started and the three older boys had just effectively made me lose my mind fighting over two computers in the library, so I didn’t want to stay in the car with them one second longer), I tell them we are NOT getting out to potty, because this is not a scheduled potty break. This is just an inconvenient, necessary stop.
Scheduled potty breaks happen when the baby needs to eat.
“But I really need to go!” the 8-year-old says. It’s been a whopping three minutes since we left.
“Did you go before you left, like I told you?” I say.
“I didn’t have to go then,” he says.
Welp, you don’t have to go now, either.
There are so many kids. It’s like a field trip traveling with all these boys. When one needs to potty, they all do. When one falls asleep, the others don’t. They just get louder.
Every two minutes a different one asks, “Are we almost there?”
We’re not even out of the neighborhood yet.
At first we answered no. Then we answered yes. Then we tried to ignore it. Then we told them to stop asking. Then we told them the truth.
“Two more hours.”
“One hour and forty-eight minutes.”
“One hour and fifty-six minutes.”
Then we turned it into math practice.
“One hour and fifty-four minutes. How many minutes have passed since you last asked?”
“One hour and fifty-two minutes. Do you notice a pattern between your questions?”
(Even that didn’t discourage them.)
In the end, this is the question that will break us. It’s the one that will make my husband and me look at each other with those crazy eyes and mouth, “Never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, EVER again,” so the kids can’t hear.
I took some traveling notes I wanted to make sure to remember next time I think it would be a good idea to pack six boys into the van and travel more than the five miles to the grocery store:
Don’t even think about it, woman. But if you do, here are some tips.
1. Bring some oversized cups.
It’s never too early for boys to learn the art of peeing in cups. When our 3-year-old twins are playing free at home, they will go hours without having to visit the restroom. When they’re in the car, their bladders shrink to about the size of a peanut. They need to pee every half hour. So make it a game: They have to pee in a cup without unbuckling.
On second thought, that’s a losing game, Mama.
2. Bring treats for every mile you go without hearing, “Are we almost there?”
This one will drive you absolutely bonkers, because when you have multiple children, they each take turns asking, as if the answer you gave their brother just wasn’t good enough for them. As if their asking may change something. As if something has changed in one hundred twenty seconds.
One kid might ask it 2,000 times. Six kids ask it 13 billion times. So reward them for keeping their mouths shut.
3. Don’t bother putting shoes on the 3-year-olds.
They take them off as soon as they get in the car anyway, and they’ll get buried under all the jackets that somehow keep ending up in the car even though it’s 200 degrees outside. Some of them will get shuffled under seats. One will probably fall out the door and you won’t notice (true story). You’ll waste way too much time (and remember: minutes are precious when traveling with kids) looking for shoes, especially when one has gone missing because it was left in the last town. So just don’t bother.
4. Bring audio books. (They’re more for you than for the kids.)
They’re so the next time they ask, “Are we almost there?” you can say, “I’m trying to listen to the story.” They’re so when they say they need to go to the potty again you can say, “Let’s wait until this story is over” (they don’t have to know that will be another hour). They’re so when they’re rocking the back of the car because they want to move it faster, you can retreat into your own world and try to ignore the way the van is not moving any faster—probably slower, because everything is slower with children when children try to help.
5. DON’T INTRODUCE I SPY. OR KNOCK KNOCK JOKES.
Notice this one is in caps. There’s a good reason for that. Three thousand rounds of I Spy. Five hundred knock knock jokes. Do you remember? Of course you do. Your eye is still twitching.
The “Are we almost there” question is nothing compared to this. So just close your mouth and keep your eyes on the road.
6. Use a better reservation system than the husband.
“Shoot,” he says when we’re turning into our destination. The sky fell dark hours ago, the kids are tired and I’m feeling especially grumpy.
“What?” I say.
“Nevermind,” he says. But I know. There is always a reason he says what he says.
“What?” I say again. I’ve got a bad feeling about this.
“Well, I can’t remember which condo is ours.”
At this point nothing could really surprise me. I don’t even blow up or rant about how could you not write it down and do I have to do everything and how about we just turn around and go back home. I’m too tired for that. So I just put my head down on the steering wheel and sigh a long, long sigh.
“They left the key under the mat,” he says, looking at the row of fifty condos.
“Have fun looking,” I say.
At the last minute he remembers. It was the first one we passed through the gate.
We all pile into the 500-square-foot condo that looked bigger in the online pictures and collapse on our bed.
Nothing like traveling together to ensure a good nights’ sleep.
