Road Trip Activities, Redux

And we’re back with a review on our toddler and baby road trip activities:

Organizational strategy: Wow, the “surprise packages” idea takes the cake for an idea that sounded good in theory but blew up in practice.  I clearly did not think through the logistics of trying to manage 15 brown lunch sacks per child in the cramped car environment.  The sacks filled up two office paper boxes (you know, the ones that reams of paper come in) and were a complete mess within hours, sending me into OCD convulsions trying to organize from the front seat.

Luckily, I had a brilliant idea before we returned home and turned one box into a divided storage compartment by cutting the sides off the lid, cutting the lid in half, and duct taping the two pieces inside the box.  The result: three compartments effective at sorting toddler toys into a slightly more manageable mess in the car.  And it fits perfectly on the floor between the carseats and the front seats.

As for the activities themselves:

Let’s Go Drivin’ in a Automobile: Toddler and Baby Road Trip Activites

As I mentioned in yesterday’s library hits, we’re leaving Friday on a road trip.  It’s going to be our first road trip ever with Monkey (age 2.5) and Sailor (age 11 mos).  If you’d been at my house the last few weeks, you might think I was over-planning for a dinky 14 hour, one day road-trip from Seattle to Salt Lake City.  There are bags of toys and distractions everywhere, several new spreadsheets have been generated, and I’ve been refining the perfect mix CD of singable adult and children’s music.  This might be overkill, but right now I live in fear of three words: road trip meltdown.  There’s nothing that turns me into an irrational mess like hearing my kids crying in discomfort and boredom from the back seat and not being able to do anything about it.

Sure, I could probably just hand Monkey a portable DVD player with some Fraggle Rock or Word World, or even better, use my Grandma’s time-honored trick and knock them out with Benedryl (don’t worry, I won’t).  But part of me says that my kids need to learn to entertain themselves on a road trip, not  just send them into a coma; it’s morally beneficial, right?  (Additionally, we don’t have a portable DVD player.  Hey, the kids should feel blessed that we have air conditioning.  Back when I was a kid . . .)

So, how do you entertain toddlers on a road trip when so many traditional road trip games depend on more observant eyes, more brain power, or more ability-not-to-drop-everything than they currently have?