A car full of kids....(and noise levels of epic proportions)

So I load the car and set off on a two hour journey....all is going well to begin with (the sat nav is working again, so I can feel safe in the knowledge that my modern technology will be there to help me out should I so need it!!) The first half of the journey is calm and event free, three out of the four sleep, and Abbie and I sing (not that tunefully in my case) along to Lady Gaga (I marvel at the amount of words Abbie actually knows, and begin to wonder, not for the first time, if she really should be singing some of the words to these songs, although, thankfully she is unaware about the meaning of most of what she is singing, and even I have no idea what a disco stick is, maybe I’m just being naive?) Half an hour before we reach our destination it all kicks off...big time! Hannah, who five minutes ago, was peacefully sleeping, oblivious to the ongoing journey, has now been abruptly woken by a very inconsiderate Abbie. She is now very awake and in a foul mood...watch out anyone who dares to cross her! Next, she drops her crocs and wants me to pick them up for her. As I am travelling at 70 mph on a busy motorway, I tell her that me reaching back to scrabble around for her crocs, is really not a good idea and is not going to happen. I ask if it would be okay for Abbie to get them for her (she is both willing and able!) however this is not the response that Hannah was wanting or indeed prepared to accept. She begins the build up to an almightily tantrum, it involves the loudest screaming and shouting I have ever heard in such a confined space, plenty of throwing her arms up above her head and kicking of feet. On occasions I can just make out the words “No, Mummy get them!” in-between the inconsolable sobbing and dangerously high disable screaming. I actually think the noise could be loud enough to melt my brain, I think maybe all my senses are shutting down. Abbie now has her own crocs on her hands and is pressing them over her ears shouting “Make her stop Mummy, make her stop!” thus adding her own helpful little input to the noise level, Georgia is crying (I’m not sure why, she’s in the very back and I don’t stand a chance of hearing her over the Hannah din.) Millie is counting at the top of her voice, something to do with me saying it was 20 minutes to go, and when she asked how long 20 minutes was, I’d foolishly said she’d need to count to 60, twenty times, and she is trying her best to let me hear that she is doing just that!) I try turning the music up and make an attempt to sing along in a kind of ‘I can ignore the noise if I try really hard’ fashion, but who am I trying to kid, we’re at brain melting decibel levels here. I briefly contemplate pulling over onto the hard shoulder to retrieve the sodding shoes, but then I’m not sure that this can actually be classed as an emergency that would justify using the hard shoulder (although, I’m sure it’s coming close – hey Mister Policeman, I’d like to see you try to drive with this mayhem going on in the back). But then I think, no, hang on a minute, she just a two year old not getting her own way, she will just have to wait. So much as it pains us (literally...ears nearly bleeding now!) we press on and make it to our end target in one piece.....just......

oh so lost!!

Yesterday, the girls and I went to visit someone on the other side of Leicester. It was meant to be a straightforward trip; it was somewhere that I had driven to many times before. However, as I came into the first bit of Leicester, I missed the next turn off. I actually couldn’t remember whether I should take the road to the left or carry straight on. I have done it loads of times before, so I started to worry that I have totally forgetful ‘baby brain’ (that’s what happens when you have kids, and stay at home with them – you forget how to function in real life situations!! – maybe I need to go back to work to stretch my brain cells a bit more??!) Anyway, I turned around and got on what I thought was the correct road, but I had got a bit confused about where I actually was and I soon realised that the road I was on was not looking at all familiar! (Again, I used to have quite a good sense of direction, but here I was frantically following signs for places I thought I recognised the names of- arrggghh!) Eventually I decided that I was definitely heading too far in the wrong direction, so I pulled over to program the postcode I needed into the Satellite Navigation system – then, shock, horror! – the Sat Nav is not working, it won’t even turn on. Okay, don’t panic, I have a map function on my phone with GPS, great, I put in the postcode only to find that I have no 3G connection and it can’t load the map. So I am feeling totally let down and abandoned by all the modern technology, and I am worrying that my constant reliance on all these gadgets has helped me to lose some of my ability to do this on my own!! I drive yet further in the wrong direction, I keep telling myself that at the next junction I am sure to see a sign I recognise! A few stressful minutes later I pull over again and I riffle in the boot and fortunately locate a MAP – yes, that’s right, a paper map, it doesn’t have batteries or plug in, it doesn’t have GPS, just an old-fashioned paper book containing pictures of all the roads!! Now to discover if I still know how to use this thing! Luckily, even with my ‘baby-brain’ I still know how to read a map and very soon I am back heading in the right direction (although I do pass a sign saying that I’m 13 miles (13 miles??!!) from Leicester – how did I get so far in the wrong direction??!! I think next time I should pull over to check the map a lot SOONER!!) So eventually, we pull up at our destination, half an hour late and quite annoyed at myself for being so stupid!!