Recently – and for the first time since February 2020 – we left the state! We drove out to Baltimore to visit dear family friends after several COVID-spoiled attempts the past 2 summers. It was a wonderful trip with some of our all-time favorite people, but in order to get there, we had to pack all 4 boys, ourselves, and loads of gear into our car and drive 8.5 hours out (& back). I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was totally manageable and only took about 10. That said, let’s be real: things do tend to run more smoothly when you start planning weeks in advance and are effectively packed up 6 days before departure.

For the record, here’s what made the cut and saved the day:

SNACKS

1. Clementines. Pre-peel, dole out.
   
2. Applesauce pouches.
   
3. Dry goods: goldfish, granola bars, mini beef sticks, raisins.
   
4. Mystery packs: one random assortment of something special in a pack (we did pretzels and a couple of gummies) – part of the novelty buys time as well as fills them up.
   
5. Food as a bribe: we used the opportunity to pick a treat at a rest stop as motivation to make good on potty promises.
   

AMUSEMENTS (rationed by me)

1. Melissa & Doug water wow books — for the biggies & for Scooch.
   
2. Travel-friendly writing tools — white boards for the biggies, a magnetic board for Scooch.
   
3. Reusable sticker packs – not so sticky they get stuck all over the car, and relatively resistant to Scooch tearing them apart.
   
4. Honorable mention: I stashed this I Spy game thinking it could be used to unite the group — eg settle a squabble with a challenge to spy 10 of the prompts in order to win all of us s treat. We didn’t end up needing it but I’m confident I could hype it up to buy an hour or even two.
   
5. MVP: we brought the boys’ Yoto player (a screen-less, ad-free audio device that you can load up with cards to play different songs, stories, or games and then let the kids control) & bought them a few new cards to keep them occupied in the “quiet” times we tried to reserve for people who wanted to nap (which is to say, no one but the infant).
   

WHAT I WOULD CHANGE FOR NEXT TIME

1. Reduce the volume of snacks – I packed envisioning us powering through long legs of the journey, but you can’t go that long without stopping for the baby’s sake and because the other boys simply need opportunities to hit the restroom. You can pick up plenty of snacks or meals en route.
   
2. Forgo the busy board – not only because our 2-year-old genuinely can’t manage some of the mechanics of these buckles & they’d be only moderately entertaining for the older boys, but because the last thing I should’ve been promoting is more practice unbuckling himself in a moving vehicle (*face palm*).
   
3. Mount a garbage bag on the seat-back of the 2nd row so the 3rd row (our older 2) could reach it. I tried pretty pointedly to minimize mess-making, but knew what an oversight I’d made when my fingers closed around the mound of still-damp tissues from J’s runny nose over the course of the drive.