Driving home

"Oh no," I muttered.
"He's not, is he?" Erin looked worried.

We were only 40 minutes into our 5 hour trip home and This American Life was waking Aidan up at least half an hour early. We'd timed the trip home so the boy would take a nap straight away when he got in the car. That gave Erin and I some us time. We could choose what to do. We could chat. We could listen to music. We could daydream. We could discuss the finer points of life or joke around. We actually chose to listen to NPR. Wrong decision. There was a great report on Obama's health care reforms which took our interest and we settled in for the hour long program. Again, wrong decision. Aidan likes hearing people speak. He likes it so much he wakes up half an hour early to hear them.

As soon as we noticed, the radio volume was rapidly turned down. I don't actually remember the next 20 minutes of driving except knowing that the only time I looked in the rear view mirror was to check out whether or not there were two little eyes open or closed. They were always open. He may have been letting out the noise of going back to sleep but showed no bodily signs.

Why worry? You might wonder. Well, he's usually fine for a couple of hours in the car but the tailend of trips can be harrowing. At least if he gets an hour of sleep we know the terror of the end of the journey can be managed.

We know the end can be bad which makes for anxiety in the middle as you worry if he's just going to break down.

Thankfully as he's becoming more used to travelling in a car he's getting better. Sunday's trip home was rather fun. Erin popped in to the back seat and entertained him with toys, food, snapping the hood of his car seat up and down and just generally making him giggle until we had a pit stop for both the car and us.

Next came a big test for me. Erin said she'd drive the rest if the way. I'd never been in control of the back seat at the end of the journey before and was petrified. This was made worse by the goal of keeping him awake as well as not crying.

Luckily we found a new game. Those who believe that adults carry millions of germs in their mouths will not like it but we had fun. Aidan would pass his dummy from his mouth by his hands to my mouth. I'd then suck away, which he found hilarious, then give him back. That passed on a good fifteen minutes. Then with the radio as our backing music Erin and I sang to him and got him home, got him in bed and that was the end of a succesful trip home.

We could finally relax to the state we originally felt when we first put the radio on.