En Route

Hello from Nebraska. I can imagine that this place is pretty bleak in January but in high summer it's an oil painting, gold and green with the occasional bright red thumbprint of a barn. It's flat but pretty and in just a few hours we'll head south and someone will hand us the Rocky Mountains and that will be nice too. We had hopes that the bi-coastal nature of interstate 80 would lead to some good license plate spotting but with the extremely notable exception of a car from Chihuahua just west of Omaha it's been a dry trip. Patrick - as he would be no doubt happy to inform you - is really bored. 

So we had our dinner party, Steve got through his meetings, and I finally handed off my article (although I fully expect them to hand it right back to me - the two parts I struggled most to find eventually came from you guys, by the  way, and thank you so much) and by Saturday night we were finally ready to start packing for our Sunday trip. There are several reasons why it is therefore unfortunate that Patrick picked that moment to step on a board and send a rusty nail through the bottom of his foot but what can you do? I took him to Urgent Care where we waited for three hours and by the time we got home I was so exasperated and cranky that I just started shoving stuff into bags. I now have one pair of pants to last me for the next six days. Steve pointed out that I can do laundry when we get to our friends which is true but I will still feel pretty stupid wrapped in a towel while my pants dry.

The trip was mostly monotonous until we got to our hotel last night. Then it was as if we had - deeply - offended the local gods.

1. We had just checked in and the children and I were tootling around the room for a few minutes while Steve went out to start bringing things more in from the car. I realized that there was an unpleasant odor that was getting worse by the second and just as I determined that it was the smell of burning; the fire alarm went off like Williams-Sonoma hitting the roof. I grabbed Caroline and said, "Patrick! Get your brother!" Patrick snatched Edward off the bed and carried him on his hip to safety for all the world like a helpful ten year old girl. I'm sure he will never do it again but it was nice to know that he was able to rise to the occasion of a crisis. So the two of us ran down the hall carrying the shoeless babies where we met Steve. I told him the room was on fire and he just raised his eyebrows. Then he dealt with everything.

2. The hotel did not burn down (electrical problem with the air-conditioning merely) so we got a new room. After we'd eaten dinner (a few trips ago I decided that the easiest thing to do is bring food to the hotel and feed the kids as they bumble around - what the meal lacks in elegance it makes up for with its expediency) I decided to take a shower while Patrick sat on the edge of the tub and soaked his perforated foot in warm water. We were in there for fifteen, maybe twenty, minutes and came out to find Steve setting up the Peapods and Edward bouncing from the big bed to the roll-away. Of Caroline there was no immediate sign. I said, "Steve where's Caroline?" and he looked up from what he was doing and glanced around. We looked under the cot, under the desk, under the pile of pillows Edward had made - she wasn't there. I looked again and again but there really aren't that many places even the most pixie-like of children can hide in less than 300 square feet. She was gone.  

Patrick said - well repeated really because he had been saying it since we left the bathroom but no one had been listening - "The door's not latched! The door's not latched!"

And, sure enough, Caroline had somehow opened the heavy hotel room door and wandered away in her pajamas.

The ancient Greeks thought it best to evoke pity and terror off-stage, as it were, so I will not take you through the minutes it took for us to locate her but I was up last night until three in the morning imagining what could have happened and it still makes me nauseous.

3. After we retrieved Caroline and bolted the door it seemed like a good time to lull the children to sleep with something nice and animated. There is no nice and animated on television after eight apparently - even the cartoon network was showing a fairly adult movie. I tried flipping between the various terrible preteen sitcoms on offer and Caroline said, "Watch a little something? Watch L-A-B-D-D?"

- When I was eight I realized that our dog responded to "Do want to take a walk?" the same as when she was asked "Do you want to take a w-a-l-k?" I thought this meant she could read or at least spell but later realized that context and inflection go a long way toward conveying meaning. So I knew this as some point but forgot it recently when I told Patrick, "After Caroline and Edward go to bed I'll let you watch an m-o-v-i-e."

Caroline promptly - and hotly - retorted, "*I* want to watch b-r-s-t!"

Her new habit now is to try to string letters together in hopes that one of them is the magic combination that opens up 'Cars'. She likes Cars. -

So the children were grudgingly watching bad TV in the minutes before bedtime and Steve was trying to make more room for our stuff by moving things, among them the coffeemaker. As he did so the coffee pot slipped, hit the edge of the table and shattered into thousands of pieces, casting shards all over our clothes and our bags and the floor and the table and the chair... Steve and I just stared at it. Then I started to laugh because GOOD LORD. We have been in this place for less than two hours and we have already started a fire and misplaced a child - now we have a billion razor-sharp shards of glass all over the floor. Something to add to the list of virtues of the Peapod by the way - not only is it a cunning toddler sized tent of surpassing comfort; it is a safe place to store even the angriest of children when the only other alternative is certain laceration.

So. That was Nebraska.

During the five odd hours I have been typing at this between reading books to the occupants of the back seats we have bid the cornhuskers goodbye and just now the first faint edges of the Rockies are becoming visible. Twenty years ago I did this drive with an idiot boy a little further to the south and once we finally got through Kansas and eastern Colorado the mountains rose up in front of us. I remember being gobsmacked. It's sort of amazing that these giant mountains just... poke up like that.

Steve has been announcing altimeter changes to a spellbound audience of one (Patrick) and my suggestion that the range was perhaps the fossilized remains of a dragon slain before Time met with the approval of an equally large audience (Caroline who said, "Oh dragon! I'm Caroline and this is our older brother Patrick") and strong rebuke from the scientific community as represented by the altitude-obsessed. Edward thinks the mountains are "oh wow cool."

We bought two things at the start of the summer (in addition to the Peapod beds that I am obviously in love with) that have made our roadtrips more pleasant: a dual-screen DVD player and a Garmin. We got them both refurbished from eBay which is my new preferred way to buy electronics. So sensible. Some days we don't turn the DVD on at all but for that last hour and a half of the day... it's nice. And Garmy (we call him Garmy and Steve says he's a she and they have a contentious relationship) has been great for figuring out food options or locating a pharmacy and most importantly for locating nearby elementary schools where we can stop and use the playground. Both items are highly recommended but Steve insists that I add that you should not expect the GPS to actually choose your route because it sucks. Steve unfortunately is still a little bitter about the Canada incident. We were driving along the Trans-Canadian highway with literally a thousand miles to go on it until our destination and all of a sudden Garmy says, "In point three miles turn right onto unpaved road." And then yesterday Garmy tried to direct us the wrong way up an on ramp.

So Steve thinks it is trying to kill us but I think Steve's problem with Garmy runs more deeply than that and is rooted in the primitive male need to assert his ability to negotiate the New York subway system without help.  

And that is it until we're in the mountains rather than under them.

PS Have you ever had a kid wander off like Caroline does?

PPS And what am I supposed to do about it?

Comments

[Cathy]

I'm in Omaha, Nebraska. And well, you nailed it.

[Julie]

Sounds like fun times! We moved from MI to Denver last October, in a freak blizzard, with a 3 yr old who had the flu, and 2 neurotic cats. I am so thankful for our portable DVD player, I can't even tell you!

[Eva]

We call our Garmin Carmen. She is a woman and so far has not successfully killed us.

[Jana]

Hello to you from Nebraska! So glad you enjoyed your time here. On the bright side, it's one of the safer places to lose a toddler. I volunteer to keep an eye out for Caroline (I'll cover the Lincoln area) until I hear that you've all made it back home.

[Spinoff]

Have I had a kid wander off like Caroline? Hasn't every parent? My story, abbreviated, is at http://emptynestfeathers.blogspot.com/2010/07/my-life-as-border-collie.html

[QoB]

"Oh dragon! I'm Caroline and this is our older brother Patrick"

The personal pronouns. I'm laughing so hard right now.

Also, I have 7 younger cousins, six of whom are boys ranging from ages 3 to 16. They can all carry small children very well, and the oldest one is a reliable babysitter.

[Heather]

Re the pants: Targets are everywhere, right?
Re Caroline: That's happened to us, too! Hotel rooms are not exactly comforting to a mother's peace of mind.

[Marsha]

Our GPS is called Mrs. Ashi. She's very bossy. The GPS in my husband's An/Droid (I can never remember - which is the phone and which is the OS?) is known to us as Mrs. Ashi's Sister. Her pique at not having her own name is demonstrated every time she issues an instruction, which are inevitably just enough erroneous as to ruin the fun but not so wrong as to be, you know, wrong.

[Candy]

We have a Magellan and we call her Maggie, and yes, she has tried to kill me on more than one occasion. I believe it is due to her extreme jealousy of the other Maggie in my husband's car, but she is quite closed-mouth about it.

[Ruth]

Oh my God, yes. My oldest once disappeared (last I'd seen him he'd been standing at my side, he took off in the time it took me to turn my head and answer a question) at the dolphin show at the Shedd Aquarium, and told me when we found him wandering nonchalantly back up the stairs in our direction that he'd just been climbing the rocks to get a better look at the belugas (!!!!) when the man told him to go back to his mother, and our younger son once hopped on an elevator and was whisked away into a 40+ story Manhatten hotel. We were stopping every elevator and contacting security when a nice woman brought him down to the desk; he'd ridden up three floors and gotten off ... she'd come to the rescue after hearing him as he ran through the halls calling for his mommy.

My youngest takes off and hides in the house all the time, and then thinks it's really, really cute not to respond when we call her name. By this time, it's a miracle my hair isn't as white as snow.

[Ally]

A friend of mine had three bolts, two hooks, and an alarm on her back door and her oldest STILL wandered off, away from the house, in the middle of the night, in wintertime. He was 6 or 7 at the time? He came bursting into her room at 5 a.m. hysterical and freezing. He had for whatever reason decided to go exploring and of course had gotten lost. I still shudder to think of it.

[Missie]

Our GPS is called Slagathor. I don't have a wanderer, but the "stealthy hider". It's just as nerve wracking.

[Megan]

My 21-month-old twin boys haven't wandered off like that yet (I say "yet" because, no matter how vigilant I try to be, I'm sure the day will come...), but my niece, when she was about three, once escaped the house and went wandering around the neighborhood in the middle of a thunderstorm. They found her several blocks away soaking wet and lugging around somebody's duck lawn ornament.

Also, my youngest brother, at about that same age, decided he HAD to go to soccer practice with my dad and older brother. After being told he could not go, he, unbeknownst to them (or anyone else), followed them out to the van and grabbed hold of the door handle trying to open it while they drove away. He hung on for a few blocks before his little arms gave out and he dropped to the pavement where he was serendipitously first happened upon by a friend from our church who worked at the hospital. He had his share of road rash but was otherwise okay. The first thing he said to my dad when Dad arrived at the emergency room? "You wouldn't let me come!"

[Jenn]

I bought my husband a Tom Tom that is named Homer, we name it because we downloaded Homer Simpson's voice for it. We took it to Connecticut with us to visit my in-laws and it picked the worst possible route for us. Instead of going across I-80, it randomly sent us across I-80 and then randomly south to Reading, PA. We knew the route was wrong and were able to fix it, but what if we didn't know where we were going and followed it on a route that added an extra 2 hours? And a better question is why were we using the GPS on a trip that we've take a dozen times? (Because my husband likes his electronics, that's why.)(At least until they try to send us on a random trip to Reading.)

[Michelle]

I'll make you feel better about Caroline walking away:

We live in Denver. Last September while cycling for the very.last.time regardless of outcome - she gorgeous by the way - we went to Beaver Creek for a long overdue weekend. We brought our then 2.5 year old. We stayed at a ritzy hotel and decided on adjoining rooms with balconies that over look the mountains. (Stay "off season" and you can stay very well.) We settled in, making sure to latch the door to his room so no one could steal him in the middle of the night - let's remember this.

As this was a belated Mother's Day gift I was headed to the on-site spa for a day of loveliness. Just as I was about to leave I went to kiss my son goodbye. As it often is with 2.5 year olds he our son ran past me and into his room - grabbing the door innocently on his way. You can guess what happened. Yep. Pulled it closed. There was no door knob on our side of the door. Remember we latched his outside door upon arrival. "Nathan, love, please open the door for Mommy." He tries the handle, but his little hands aren't big enough to turn the knob. Soon we hear the sound he makes when he's frustrated and giving up. Then I heard him pounce on the bed and start playing with his matchbox cars. I looked at my husband, David, and said, "Yeah, he's not going to be of any help now. You called downstairs, right?"

The next thing I know David is out on the balcony and scaling the front facade to reach our son's balcony. He climbs over and knocks on the window. Nathan is jumping up and down and laughing at Daddy being outside. David told Nathan to slide a chair over to the door. Nathan does as told. Then David asks him to stand on the chair and open the door. Nathan starts up the chair and then looks at David with a very solemn face, "But I'm not allowed to climb on furniture."

Eventually David was able to convince him to climb up and open the door. All was saved! Except my appointment at the spa - they're rather bitchy when you show up late regardless of the fact your toddler had locked himself in his room.

Oh and no one from the hotel ever came upstairs...

See? It could have been worse.

And welcome to Colorado!! I moved here from the Bay Area in 1998, met my husband (who, ironically, was living and working in the Bay Area) and moved back to California in 2003, and spent the next five years begging to come back. It worked!

[SarahB]

Omg, I just about spit tomato covered in pesto on my computer screen withholding laughter. What a great post! I'm sorry you had to live through all that, but you sure know how to tell it.

"Not only is it a cunning toddler sized tent of surpassing comfort; it is a safe place to store even the angriest of children when the only other alternative is certain laceration."--The Peapod people should really be paying you for this stuff.

My husband talked about getting a GPS for months and months and I HATE GPS route-choosing and voices and he WANTED a GPS. Then his job started requiring him to go to meetings all over Northern Virginia, at which point the debate ended. A wrong turn in NoVa=late to meeting=bad. But it is his special toy for his car only. (We use google maps on our phones when together, typically.)

[Trisha]

Our Garmin tried to send us into the ocean several times while we were driving around San Francisco. Such a jerk.

[Candy]

While in Colorado in June our Garmy instructed us to take a road that would lead us over a particular mountain. It seemed that the safer route would be the one around the mountain. Luckily, we had a road map with us and decided to consult one of the locals. He informed us that the road over the mountain was impassible in winter and he wasn't sure that all the snow was melted. No thanks, Garmy. We'll go around!

[paige]

Wandering children:

My daughter, when she was three, became something of a local legend. Her exploits were many, varied and petrifying. Her three year old year still lives on in my nightmares. That was the year she climbed to the top of a 150 ft. tall tree and got stuck, got out on the roof, hid in a local store (which we had to have locked down because we thought she'd been snatched), TWICE in a month, ran away from preschool, caused us to have to call poison control three times in ONE WEEK...

She is sixteen now, and a perfectly lovely girl, mature for her age and always cheerful, loving and eager to help out.

Coincidentally, possibly, her given name is Caroline, though we call her Carlie-Rose.

[Noelle]

Julia, I didn't get a chance to tell you (or Steve?) this at my party, but I am SO SORRY Patrick stepped on that rusty nail at our house. I feel terrible. :-( I didn't hear you'd gone to Urgent Care. I did see Patrick a few times after the incident and he told me if was feeling 'almost normal' but I guess it's still a rusty nail, right? I'm so sorry.

As for your trip angering the I-80 gods -- yikes! Did the hotel staff come up with a vacuum for the glass shards?!? And that little stinker Caroline! She's fully embracing her exploration of the world, no doubt.

Our GPS (currently unnamed) has steered us wrong, though the Google maps app on our iphones are almost always even more horrid. The GPS was a disaster when we were in the Blue Ridge Mountains in NC last year. We woudl have driven off many cliffs had we followed those directions! I can't wait to hear how yours does in the mountains.

We'll be gone next week (Minocqua) but let's get together soon after. Don't worry - we can skip our Farm of Horrors if you like. By the time Steve and the kids left Saturday, he was looking rather pale and haggard. ;-)

Noelle

[scantee]

Yeah, I have a kid just a bit older than Caroline who is a wanderer. Drives me mad. We were at the mall a few days ago (Mall of America amusement area, on a busy weekend, to give you a sense of the general chaos) when he just walked away. I was watching him but thought I would stand back and see how long it took it to get scared and let's just say my limit on this little game was reached long before he ever even noticed we weren't around. Not sure how to impress upon him the need to stay near us. At least he's independent?

[SarahB]

Welcome to Colorado!

A few months ago as we were at home and getting ready to go somewhere my 2yo disappeared. I'd already opened the garage door and left the house door to the garage unlocked. A couple frantic minutes later I looked out the door to see him across the street heading for the neighbor who was working in his garage. Very thankfully we live on a quiet, not much traffic street. Terrifies me still!

[Hannah]

We call our Garmin the Direction Bitch. She's always very put out when you don't follow her instructions. And when you do, come to think of it. And now she refuses to charge. She'll show us!

Our little one is too young to wander, but does regularly wake up with her head stuck under the crib aquarium with no idea how to get it out...

[Alice]

I turned around in a Target in Savannah, Ga., and couldn't locate my two-year-old. I was trying not to panic so I calmly asked a passing employee if he had seen her -- there ensued a gratifying Code Blue thing where he got on the walkie-talkie and then there was some sort of coded announcement to all employees on the PA system which I assume meant "don't let any kids out of the store, and then look under every dingle garment rack." SO that worked out fine, but it's scary to think what must have happened for them to institute such a system (paging Adam Walsh)... as for Garmin? Fugeddaboudit. The iPhone (Maps app) is the only way to fly, IMO.

[victoria]

Our GPS has a feminine voice. My husband refers to her as "your sister wife."

[sara]

We called the GPS "Robot!" As in, "Robot! Which way?"

Whenever we arrived, before switching it off, we'd say, "Thank you, Robot."

[Kathryn T]

Three days ago, my husband left for work while I was in the shower and our 3 year old was safely transfixed in front of Sesame Street. WE THOUGHT. I got out of the shower, she didn't respond to the traditional hailing, I went looking for her. . .

. . . and found her out in the front yard, wearing only her underpants, trying to pet a wild rabbit. She wasn't unattended, mind you; one of the neighbor boys, aged six, was with her. He was mysteriously dressed as Captain Jack Sparrow. And that is how we learned that Lily can open the front door by herself!

My only funny GPS story is when we were driving on the reversible express lanes on I-5 through Seattle. Somehow the GPS didn't know the lanes were reversible, and thought we were driving the wrong way on the highway. I am sure I imagined the increasingly nervous tones and rising agitation behind her "Make the first legal U-turn. You may be violating local traffic laws. This route may be dangerous. Please make the first legal U-turn," but it was funny anyway.

[SarcastiCarrie]

The CODE ADAM alert at Bass Pro Shops means SarcastiCarrie has lost her kid. He went from up front where you pay all the way to the back of the store and was found sitting on an ATV making "vroom vroom" noises.

[-R-]

Our GPS repeatedly tried to make us take the I-35 bridge in Minneapolis, when there was no bridge. And then it refused to recalculate our route when we took the detour.

[HereWeGoAJen]

My one year old learned to open the hotel door. I had to keep that second chain lock thingy on it the whole trip.

[Crystal]

Huh... faced with the prospect of moving three kids, one cranky husband, one very ginormous lap dog, one anti-social cat, one anti-social and still pretty wild mustang, one fat spoiled pony (neither used to being trailered much, and me not used to trailering at *all*, full stop) and dramatically streamlined household goods to the opposite end of the country (again) by ourselves in a rented Penske.... suddenly my heart is filled with terror....

Huh.

Wow. Sucks. Just sucks. My husband likes to say if we didn't have bad luck we'd have no luck at all.... I didn't mean to infect you. Hopefully you've built up sufficient immunity by now and life will return to cheery. :)

Last major cross-country move, flush with the pre-Y2K glow of signing bonuses and full relo packages (those were the days... how I wish they were still the days. Think full relo includes mustangs and ponies?) we were holed up in a tiny but charmingly urban Oakwood Suites in Bellevue, WA with a newly 3 year old John (is this REALLY 11 years ago? Surely it's.... 6. or 7. Not ELEVEN?). Unlike the hotel rooms it so strangely resembled, there was no childproof way up high swing lock on the door.

It was a 1 bedroom so we had John sleeping on the pull out couch. Late one night I wake to the sound of banging. These doors stay locked and close automatically, so in his sleepy confusion, he went to look for us, unlocked the deadbolt, wandered into the hallway, the door slammed shut behind him. Thankfully he didn't wander off, he could have operated the elevator and wandered out the front door, no security, nothing, and out into one of Bellevue's major thoroughfares. Instead his brain started to function enough that he banged on the door, and I finally heard him.

The nice folks at Oakwood sent us up a folding cot the next morning, which we wedged into the tiny one bedroom, on the OPPOSITE side of our tiny bed, by pushing our bed up against the opposite wall/closet, and wedging the cot in there at a slightly odd angle, thus forcing John to climb OVER us should he try and escape again, which thankfully he did not.

My sister was watching him almost exactly a year earlier while I took a shower before the long flight back from Vegas to San Jose, CA, and from San Jose to Texas a day later (don't ask.... there aren't enough pages in the internet to explain) and I come out of the shower and my Stepmom notices that the front door was open. They lived in a second floor apartment in a nicely gated apartment complex with no perimeter fencing keeping it from the busy streets on either side (in Vegas!). I could not move. My Stepmom sprinted for the door, and found him 5 driveways down (thankfully away from the street, but still down a staircase and past several cars.... unharmed. I still wanted to slap either myself or my sister silly.

So... I think compared to me you and Steve get parents of the Millennium award. No idea what to do about it. Put a cow bell around her waist? Touch sensor alarms stuck to her feet?

GPS are fun in Portland. Being told to turn left in the middle of the Fremont Bridge is... entertaining (or terrifying, depending on who is driving). My friend first called hers KenKen. Then AssAss, if that gives you any indication of the health of their relationship.

GPS units are a blessing in many ways, I'm on my second, but like cel phones, the manufacturers have not yet figured out either how to perfect the technology or the customer service aspect. It is the downside to modern gadgetry, I detest paying for the "privilege" of being a beta tester.

I changed mine to a nice female English accent, because the male accents made me want to fall asleep, and the English one makes me pay enough attention to decipher what it's saying (slip route is so much nicer than onramp) otherwise I tune the damn thing out completely, thus rendering it completely useless in relation to the reason I originally purchased it (getting lost on my way home from the local grocery store).

My husband thinks it must curse at me in it's "head" (I said turn left, you dumbass! Hey, did you turn me on for me to flap my gums? Hello, are you listening? or even "please turn right at the next opportunity and go straight to hell") for all the listening I do to it. I just think he identifies a little too closely with a little glowing screen encased in black plastic, which let's be honest, wouldn't be a bad way to obtain a husband..... Might improve some of them!

Hope the article is more of a smashing success than you think....

[Elizabeth Hosto]

I lost my youngest at the zoo, I turned around in the seahorse exhibit and he was gone. We ran around like idiots for what seemed like forever looking for him. He went downstairs and he was on his way out the door to the camels when I finally caught up to him. Do you know how hard it is to spot a kid at a crowded zoo? UGH!

[Davida]

Julia,

Maybe a brief stop at the mall is called for so you can have another pair of pants.

I hope the rest of your trip is not a continuation of the series of unfortunate events.

[Yatima]

I lost Big Girl in Sydney, Australia and Little Girl at this year's Maker Faire, both times for long enough to involve the authorities. I can still make myself cry if I think about it. At all.

We have the posh English man's voice on our Garmin, so his name is Daniel, after Daniel Craig. Especially funny when I miss a turn, and he says, in that I-am-being-patient-here voice of his: "Recalculating."

[beth]

With my oldest we had to practically padlock the front door; he was getting chairs to undo the head-high deadbolt before he was two. The mail lady brought him back to me once while I was still putting on my shoes to go to the park (I was heavily pregnant, so clearly X thought it took too long). Luckily we had trained him to stay out of the street, so he was just walking around the block hoping for an alternate route. I think I was sewing bells onto his pjs at one point.

I lost him at a zoo once too, but it was a kid zoo where I had confidence in the lost-child task force. An older brother of a playmate brought him back before I went into premature labor from stress (I was still heavily pregnant for that one).

The younger one twice managed to ditch me during hikes, once managing to stay in the car for ten minutes while the rest of us marched up a mountain in 100 degree heat, and once just slipping off the side of the trail while we trekked on. (Different hikes, same bad attitude.) He was four.

[Diane]

My Garmin is named Amelia. She can't always be depended on to get me where I want to go. In other words, Amelia tends to get lost. My husband's GPS is named Cortana, after the commander in Halo. My son and his wife call theirs Bitchin' Betty, because that's all she does.

Not only have my kids wandered off, but I left one at the video store (remember those?) when he was about five. I decided to make a quick stop to drop off some rentals, and told both kids to stay in the car. My youngest, unknown to me, followed me in. He went over to the animated feature shelf to peruse, and I popped right back into the car. My oldest, seeing his dreams of becoming an only child coming true, never said a word. I went into the house, and the phone rang. A little voice on the other end said plaintively, "Mommy?". Of course, my children were playing nicely in the back yard. I told the poor little waif that he had the wrong number and hung up. In a split second, the phone rang and the same little voice said "Mom-it's-Shane-and-don't-hang-up!!". I went to pick him up, face burning the whole way. Fortunately, he HAD been paying attention during the whole phone number memorizing lesson. To this day, 22 years later, he delights in telling that story.

[Karen]

We call our GPS "Gypsy" after the girl robot on Mystery Science Theater 3000. It doesn't talk, just beeps. My son loves to say, after it beeps, "Yes, got it, we know, Gypsy."

And I have never had a two year old get out of a hotel room like that. But then, my husband is very security minded (read: slightly paranoid, just enough to keep the aliens in check) and always latches the hotel doors as soon as he comes in, and insists I do the same.

[Nee in Germany]

My friend has a son who tends to disappear (he's 5), and she was thrilled to discover that handing him some bubble wrap kept him preoccupied enough that he didn't wander off, and she could hear where he was to boot. Better than a cow bell, she said. Maybe you should add a roll to Caroline's diaper bag for trips. :)

[Pam L]

I had my oldest disappear on his Hot Wheel bike and I was sure I was oging to have to call the police. I Drove around the neighborhood and stopped at teh entrance to the park. There he was way down the hill at the playground area. When I asked him why he went down there by himslef, let alone leave out street! he said "These kids were waiting for me" not that he knew thme. My youngest didn't leave the street , but he would hide and not come out when called. On two occasions he was in someone else's house. One time the people weren't home but left their front door unlocked and he got in and was playing with their sons toys when they got home. We were doing yard work out front and their front door was blocked by bushes so we didn't see him go in. Another time he and his partner-in-crime knew we were looking for them and were hiding in the other kids house when all the parents were outside in the summer. We were calling and calling and finally I saw the curtain move. We also lost a babysitter because he hid from her and would not come out all evening until we got home. Good times.

[Christiana]

I left my 2 yr old Caroline in the house, watching her favorite TV show in my husband's care when I went to the grocery store a couple of months ago. He was working in the back yard and noticed our dogs barking in the front yard about 15 minutes later. She had opened the door to see where I was and wandered outside to the front yard. Thankfully, she apparently hadn't left the yard and we don't live on a very busy street, but he then decided it was best to keep her in the back yard with him where he could keep a better eye on her. She then, of course, proceeded to cover herself from head to toe in dirt while he worked, so I came home to her getting a bath. Gotta love those adventurous 2-yr-olds! We have to keep the deadbolt on all the time now - thankfully, she is still too short to reach that and hasn't yet figured out that she could, potentially drag her stool or chair over to the door to climb up and reach it.

[Carrie (in MN)]

We just returned from that trip! When we returned home, we turned off 80 at North Platte and took 83/183 up to I-90 and that across S. Dakota. I'm not sure this route is shorter, it's just set up to this: I think it was on 183 that we stopped to take a picture of Assman Implement (implements in this case being farm equipment). I'm still wondering - what the hell? Have fun on your trip!

[jb]

just got back from a hotel with a kid who is a few months younger then Caroline (girl too) and we have to keep hotel room doors bolted. she has no limit, never has. When she was only crawling she would just keep going. Older child (son) much more sensible and never EVER had to worry. read thru comments but did not find anything helpful...pass on any good tidbits. Also, never posted on the pool post but my girl would be screaming like a banchee to go on the big kid slide - not calmly waiting for her brother to come down....it will serve her well when she is older - just got to get thru it now.

[Betsy]

We lost my niece once in a Wal*Mart. She had left my sister's checkout lane to come over and stand with me; but she didn't see me and continued AAAAALLLLLL the way down to the far end of the checkout lanes trying to find me. There are a lot of checkout lanes in a Wal*Mart.

The nice thing is that Wal*Mart takes their Code Adam's very seriously. I hate a lot about that store; but I'll always be grateful for how promptly and seriously they handled our lost toddler.

Yatima, farther up, mentioned the patience of the English male voice on her GPS and I concur. We always say that he sounds like he genuinely *wants* us to find our way. The American female voice always sounds like she just wants to sit and hate us. She has tried to steer us to our doom on many occasions.

[Priscilla]

Perhaps in exchange for an hourly fee, Patrick would allow you to bungee cord Caroline to him? Short of that, I have no ideas. She's a wily one.

Fingers crossed that the return trip is blissfully uneventful!

[KatieV]

One day when our oldest was 2 and a half but still not verbal, I thought husband was watching him, and husband thought I was watching him. He wandered outside and down the street. The worst part is that neither husband nor I noticed--and then a neighbor (without children--oh, the judgment in his eyes!) came knocking at our door asking, "Isn't this your kid?" Oops.

[Megan]

I take it back. One of my 21-month-old boys has wandered off before, and it was at a hotel, too. It was in the end of May. My husband had last left our son Lincoln running around the lobby with his (my husband's) mother. He assumed she understood that Lincoln was in her care. She apparently did not understand this and just sat down at a table and stopped looking after him for some reason. By the time I discovered he was gone, he had made his way out of the lobby and into the parking lot. Luckily the parking attendant was there to keep him from running into the street.

[Veronica]

My daughter is a wanderer. She is also a bolt and run kind of kid. She has (I don't joke here, because I am still terrified) ended up exploring on the side of the road, more than once.

LUCKILY she is almost 4 and we have had big conversations about the highway that runs along the front of our property, but still. My baby, on the side of the road. I cried, after I'd finishing smacking her bottom and dumping her uncerimoniously in time out. Yep, smacked bums for leaving the property.

She is just an excapee of extreme measures. Like Houdini. I ended up TYING our small yard's gates closed with baling twine and she STILL got out somehow. I suspect she scaled the 5ft fence to do it, because everything was still tied shut, yet she was somehow, out in the big yard. It makes me wish we had a 1km long driveway and that we were miles from a road.

She's getting better about only checking for eggs and feeding the chooks now when she disappears, but I still panic. And somehow, she ended up in the back corner of the property, being electrocuted by the fence (hubby thought she was inside with me, I thought he was paying attention). She terrifies me.

[Laura]

We call our Garmin (surprise) "Garmin"- it's definitely a love/hate relationship- she can be a fickle bitch- but all in all we love her... The transition from the wheat fields to the mountains is breathtaking- I am not religious, but when I lived in Montana, I realized why they call it "God's Country"... Hope your trip progresses in the best possible way!

[Paula]

We call our Garmin "Garmina" because of the woman's voice (excpet when the kids get the bright idea to change it to Dutch before mom's long business trip). I love Yatima's idea of a patient English man lovingly directing me to turn, though...

And yes, she takes me the wrong way quite frequently. I can't count the number of bridges I've gone over (I'm in South Louisiana) where she indicates that we are CLEARLY underwater.

[Becky]

I can't offer help with the other things but Netflix has a rather large number of children's shows you can stream on your computer. We've found that very helpful in hotel rooms when trying to set things up. As long as you have a laptop and internet or, in a pinch, an iPhone, etc, you can have Kipper on in less than a minute.