Professional Narrator

Add to my many jobs these days the title of Professional Narrator...

Unlike some other babies, Maddie is not necessarily a huge fan of the car. She might be asleep when you get her strapped into the car seat, but once you put that thing into the car, she loses her mind (and last week she lost an entire bottle all over herself and the car seat :/).

Early on, we tried giving her a pacifier, which worked great, until you got five minutes down the road and it fell out of her mouth. We can't very well pull over to give it back to her every few miles (although I have been guilty of pulling into the McDonald's parking lots once or twice and hopping out of the car to give it back to her when I couldn't take it anymore).

Well, last week we got stuck in traffic on the way to pick up our weekly CSA share. It was near her feeding time, and she did not want to be in the car anymore (neither did I, so I can't blame her). So first, I started shhhing to try to get her to calm down. And before I passed out from shhhing, I started narrating our trip. "Looks like we're stuck in traffic....oh the light's out at the intersection ahead....There's a red car in front of us....Do you remember the last time we drove this way?....Oh look! We're moving....Only two more turns until we get there...etc...etc..." Well, it worked, and by the time we got to the farm, she was sound asleep. So, when I put her in the car yesterday to head to my physical therapy appointment, we repeated the whole process. And for 20 minutes I did nothing but talk to myself about everything I saw from our house to the Wellness Center. And sure enough, she fell asleep again!

Luckily, she's a bit more calm if her car seat is in the stroller, otherwise today's trail walk with some other area moms could have been a little bit embarrassing and a lot less enjoyable! (After all, I meet with these women for adult conversation.)

With our long car trip coming up next week, I'm guessing we'll be spending some time narrating again. Luckily, we'll both be in the car and can take turns coming up with something to say about all of the nothingness in Indiana...