First "Mommy and Me" trip... to NY

I decided to take advantage of the fact that daycare is closed on Columbus Day for in-house training and that I would need to take that day off to go to visit my mom in Long Island. Gene had to stay home to get some work done. My boss was advising me to take Friday off too so that it wouldn't take too long to get up there (being a NY native). I debated the idea of leaving late afternoon on Friday so that Sabrina could just sleep the whole way up; or maybe leaving early Saturday. In the end I decided to leave work early (11:00) on Friday to allow me enough time to go home, pick up Sabrina from daycare, go home, throw stuff into the car, and head out.

We left the house at 1:15 pm and off we were!! That is until we hit the beltway. Ugh. It had already taken us 1 hour and we weren't even in Maryland yet. We stopped at the "Maryland House" north of Baltimore and it was around 4:30/5:00. I wasn't sure what I could find there that wouldn't be too unhealthy for Sabrina to eat. I was relieved to see that Sbarro's had a kid's portion of meatballs and veggies as a side. Perfect! I had a slice of pepperoni and Sabrina enjoyed her dinner as well. A quick diaper change in the car and we hit the road again, after about a 45 minute stop. We did fairly well, traffic-wise.

Night was beginning to fall once we hit the NJ turnpike and I figured it was a good time to stop for a bio break before heading into the NYC area. Again, a diaper change in the car, keeping my head on a swivel for shady looking people (I've read about too many not-so-good things happening at rest areas). Once we got back into the car, we hit some traffic near the Lincoln tunnel exit due to an accident, but then it was smooth sailing over the George Washington Bridge, Throgs Neck bridge and on the Long Island Expressway. We got to my mom's at 9:30 pm. Sabrina was fast asleep (had been ever since that last pit stop), but woke up as I was changing her into her sleep-sack and then proceeded to down her sippy cup of milk.

I was really tired and hit the sack around 10:00 pm.