Having recently made the decision to take a (15+ hour) road trip with our almost 5 year old boy and 2 month old baby girl I would also add a couple newly hard earned tidbits – be realistic about your expectations and know each child… We lulled ourselves into thinking that it would work with such a young infant based on our older child at her age – he would get in the car and just sleep. She did not. Quite the opposite. It was a long looooong trip with much newborn crying, many stops and a lot of night time driving! But our challenges on the first half of the trip led us to the creative solution of me and the baby flying home, while my husband and older son drove home. It was a way we could all enjoy a far away from home place, and the relief of knowing we’d all be spared a car ride with a screaming baby on the way home was worth the plane ticket.

http://mamabusypants.blogspot.com/2009/07/anderson-family-travel-survival-in-21st.html

Take care,
Jeannie @ The Adventures of Mr. Busypants.

i hope you had a great trip Emily. i have to tell you that 2 years ago my husband had a seminar in Scottsdale Arizona. we were in Santa Monica at that time. zoe was 4 and ori was 1. for some odd reason i have decided we should drive and join him (he had a great suit in a nice hotel with a pool etc) i am not sure what i was thinking. it is about 6 hours drive. i think about half way i finally understood what i was doing but than it was too late to turn around, we were already half way. the drive went great. no tantrums what so ever. i remember talking to zoe alot before we left telling her how she needs to be my helper and make sure ori was doing ok. it worked.
we had a great vacation.

btw,
another great game we play in the car or on hikes is: 20 questions (we dont really count the questions) someone needs to think of an animal and the rest need to guess what animal it is with yes and no questions.
tali