Driving Duo

Last week, Trajan went to Dallas and Oklahoma for the week.  I dropped him off and then headed back to Austin (about 200 miles) for the week.  He had a roaring good time.  Paul had to work, but Chiron and I headed up Friday to see some family/friends, for me to go to a board meeting and to pick Trajan up.  The drive up there was completely uneventful.  Stopped once for about fifteen minutes to feed him.

The drive back, not so much.  I'm sad because I took some moments to stick some notes in blogpress, but apparently didn't save it or publish as a draft, so my little notes are done.  Oh well, you mainly miss out on some quotes.

Headed out and made it about ten minutes before Chiron started crying.  I found an exit, got him out, changed an identified poopy diaper and determined that he wasn't hungry.  Put him back in and within a couple minutes he was crying again.  Pulled off the highway again and this time could find nothing I could address.  Started driving again, crying started again.  Decided to wait five minutes and then pulled off again. 

At this point I decided to try a modified cry-it-out procedure.  After that five minute period, I next drove for ten minutes with the crying, then fifteen and then twenty.  At the break after the twenty minute period I decided to try giving him a dose of one of his acid reflux medicines even though it wasn't due for another five hours.  Could have been coincidence, but there was silence for almost twelve minutes after that.  Then the wailing came back with a vengeance. 

Being the quick thinker that I am, I searched in maps for "elementary school" and found one less than four miles from our location at that point, so I proceeded there thinking that Trajan could play and Chiron could at least have some more substantial time out of the car and perhaps he was hungry at this point.

Note: google for shade.

We were in Lorena, Texas and let it be known that the Lorena Elementary School playground has no shade.  However, there was a nice treed area near the front entrance, so I decided we would go over there and Trajan could run around while I changed Chiron again and fed him.  He did for a while and dug in the dirt, but then said he wanted to go see if the playground was too hot.  It was 102 degrees.  But, I didn't see any real reason to not let him go see for himself that it was too hot and there was a shaded walkway from the school to the playground that Chiron and I could sit under, so we went over.

He had a ball.  Declared it was not too hot at all.  Slid, climbed, spun, laddered and more.  I didn't want to take Chiron into the direct sun, so I didn't go touch it, but it sure did look hot.

I shot some video of him because he was just carrying on so impressively with playing and singing, but between my being off under the walkway and some serious wind, not really worth showing.
Then back into the car where the screaming began again.  Trajan fell asleep and Chiron was still screaming.  Finally, during the 35 minute period he fell asleep and slept all the way to the house.  Phew.

Apparently Chiron wasn't traumatized for life, as he looked quite happy when we got home and he was playing a game with Daddy for game night: