We left for DC on the morning of Friday January 14th. To be honest we set our expectations super low with how traveling in a car with our 18 month old would be. All we wanted to do was make it to Indianapolis the first night and Pittsburgh the second night. This would leave us around 4 hours of travel on our final day with some wiggle room. The idea of spreading this trip out across two and a half days wasn’t ideal, but we figured Naomi would probably not deal well with days in the car much longer than 6 or 7 hours. Naomi far exceeded our expectations. She was such a trooper! We didn’t however realize before this trip that she gets pretty car sick…learned that the hard way. But once we figured out how to deal with that the rest of the trip went pretty well.
Before leaving on this trip I had been trying to find a lot of different ways to keep a toddler occupied in the car other than just with an iPad. My plan was to give her stuff to do but if she lost her mind we would play a playlist of “Naomi songs” and once we were all sick of hearing “Hot Dog” from Mickey Mouse Club House for the 100th time I would let her watch a movie on the iPad. Some of the toddler car activities I had found involved making an “activity binder” full of random sensory toys, objects, games etc. I so terribly wanted to make this myself, but with the craziness of getting ready to move there was just no way I could do it before we left. However, my amazing mother-in-law made one for me! And let me tell you, it was a hit! Naomi’s favorite activity? Fit the colored straws in the parmesan cheese container. So simple, yet helped entertain her for hours!
On the last day of travel we left with one goal in mind, get to the apartment before the impending snowstorm! We made it to our new apartment just in time, we walked in and about 10 minutes later the storm started. We did well! Walking into our apartment felt surreal. I’ve tried to picture in my mind what it would look like to live in the middle of the city, and I previewed pictures of this apartment and what the views might be, but I wasn’t prepared for how awesome it was! There is something unique and exciting about seeing the entire city light up around you as the sun sets. You are in the calm and quiet of your apartment, but literally everywhere else around you something is happening! Upon arrival at our new apartment, I started to get our things settled and organized while Joel quickly ran out to get us some essentials for our first night: food and wine. Once again for those of you who know me, the wine part was absolutely necessary. We settled in the for the night and clinked our glasses in relief and excitement, we had made it one step closer.