40 minutes a day in the car with a 2 year old?

                       Let the Road Trip Begin!                            

Here’s the bad news.

 My husband – his name is Steve – is going back to work. He’s been at home with our 2 little girls since the littlest was 3 months old and I went back to work.

That, in itself, isn’t bad news. Extra income can only be a good thing, I’m hoping, and the dayhome where the girls are going is FANTASTIC, Gabrielle loved it there before Catalina was born.

Trust me, I’ve been through the stress and panic of being a working mom. It still comes and goes, but I’m pretty sure we’re going to be OK in that regard.

What suddenly made me freak out was the realization that now my drive to and from  work, which is already 20 minutes long each way, is going to include 2 little girls strapped into carseats at 2 notorious times of day - first thing in the morning, and right before dinner on the way home.

So that’s 40 minutes altogether that we have to spend squished into the 1992 Nissan Axxess. Thank goodness we aren’t in a big city with constant rush-hour traffic. Getting stuck behind farm equipment on Highway 2A is bad enough.

I used to do this with Gabrielle when she was a 1 year old. Mornings were usually OK, but the trip home was typically a bit of a nightmare, until I started handing out Arrowroot cookies and juice boxes before we left the city. At least, most of the time. Occasionally I forgot, and then the trip home was madness: “I wants a cookie! I wants my juice, Mom!” Insert heartbreaking sobs here.

 So now . . . instead of one little girl, there will be 2 little girls strapped into carseats. 20 minutes, 2 times a day. Me in the front, trying to sing “Baby Beluga” or something to keep them cheerful.

Believe me, they can be a tough crowd.

You know, I could feel the tension mounting to exponential levels already yesterday when I thought about this new arrangement, which begins next week.

But suddenly it occurred to me that maybe I should freak out less, and think about this another way. At present, I see the girls 40 minutes less per day then I will once the “road trips” begin. It might not be so-called “quality time” a hundred percent of the time, but there are some good things that go on while we’re cruising down the road. Gabrielle and I used to look out for choo-choo trains, and that was pretty exciting. We waved at kids on the schoolbus when we passed them. Gabrielle liked to point out the little donkeys in a field we pass, and she learned all the words to “Baby Beluga” at a pretty young age, which has got to be good for language development . . . so on, so forth.

Bottom line – scary commute, but some quantity time.