Mommy, Warrior Princess

Traveling with these kids is always interesting (and usually hilarious--we'll get to that next time).

I don't have any photo documentation of the five-hour drive I made from Mesa, AZ to Las Vegas, but I was pretty proud of myself for doing it alone. I rigged up the DVD player for the kids in the back, set up my stash of bribes/snacks in the passenger seat for easy reachability (not a word?), and set up the car stereo balance so my audiobook would only play in the front seat (eliminating the "Mooooooooom that's too louuuuuud and I can't hear my moooooovie!" complaint) and we set off into the desert.

It wasn't uneventful. I am sorry to say that I shouted (like, really shouted) a few times for someone to stop crying/yelling (hypocritical, I know), or to stop hitting the other, etc. My teething Charlie screamed (not gently) on and off the whole way (except for the 30 minutes that he fell asleep) because he didn't want to be in the car. He kept pulling at his car seat straps saying "Buckle me! Help buckle!" (which means LET ME OUT!) and at one point, tears streaming down his face, he yelled, "I'm NOT. HAPPPPYYYYYYY!!!!" Any playing and laughing seemed to escalate into wails of disbelief and indignation, and sometimes kicking/hitting. And everybody freaked out if something got dropped on the floor that Mommy couldn't reach from the driver's seat (you know I didn't stop driving to pick up every spilled Teddy Graham or angrily-chucked sippy-cup).

But I got to listen to a lot of my book and, when it was quiet, I admired the desert in a way I never have before: the beautiful, open stretches of sunbaked land with so much sky it almost makes you feel like you breathe easier, the mountains turning blue or purple in the distance, plateaus and valleys and the flat mesas of Arizona, the shock of catching sight of sapphire blue lake water near the Hoover Dam, so strange and lovely after hours of dust, red, and tan. The further we drove on those endless stretches of highway, the more amazed I was by just how much land there was. Land with no houses, no telephone lines, no people. Just earth, untouched and wild. It was the first time I've ever gotten to drive this far by myself--Steve always does the driving for our family road trips--and I reveled in the little moments of connection with the landscape, especially the way the road rose and fell beneath us as it followed the contours of hills and valleys. My stomach sometimes dropped out from under me, like it does when you hit the first big dip on a roller coaster, and on one peak-and-valley stretch I almost got a little dizzy. It was sort of grounding, to think about the earth that much.

We made it five hours and only had to make one bathroom stop (plus, okay, I did stop once to give Charlie his beloved blanket hoping it would take the edge off of his dismay at so much car time), and since I'd decided to be Zen before we left (because I  knew I couldn't break up fights and drive an SUV at the same time), I felt like it went pretty well. Definitely not worried about doing another long drive solo again. I just keep my traveling-alone-with-tired-kiddos mantra going in my head: This too shall pass. And we're not going to stop doing fun things together just because we have to travel places to do them. I'm no peach for them to deal with on those long travel days either, but they still love me. ;)

I already admitted that I did have some shouting moments (for which I later apologized to Gracie, who acted like she didn't know what I was talking about, and then asked if I had been yelling for Charlie), but, as cathartic and gut-wrenchingly guilt-inducing as those were, they also didn't really work. Only one thing did:

Driving through the craziness of Las Vegas only 6 minutes from our hotel, Charlie, startled awake by his big sister, started in on another ear-piercing shrieking fit. I was trying to get through several big freeway changes in just a couple minutes, driving a beast of a car and trying to read directions and I just could not take the extra noise and chaos. Yelling, pleading quietly, being soft-but-stern and even sing-songing at him to stop crying hadn't made any difference, so, in desperation (or perhaps even divine inspiration?) I let out a sound that can only be described as a Xena war-cry. You know the one. The high-pitched, tongue-rolling call heard only at 9pm on a 1990's Saturday night, during primetime episodes of Xena, Warrior Princess. Somehow, miraculously, that sound made the backseat fall silent long enough that I could then cheer, "Yaaaaaay! All done crying! All done!" so joyfully and convincingly that Charlie didn't bother to tear up again. I wonder if Lucy Lawless has ever resorted to this tactic on family vacations...