One week til impending doom

One week from today might just be the worst day of my life.

One week from today we will be attempting, against better judgement, to take Cooper on a cross country road trip.
I feel like my life is going to be divided into two stages now. Before Road Trip and After Road Trip. Will I come back a war torn, battle scared, hardened, bitter soul? Someone who yells at neighbor children for playing because the sounds remind her of the relentless screaming that one dark day in the middle of Nebraska?
How many times can I listen to Baby Beluga before I throw myself from a moving vehicle?
Can you tell I'm a little nervous for this trip?

It was our turn to go to Minnesota for Christmas this year. We didn't want to drive because of the weather, and flying was ridiculously expensive. We mollified oursevles with a great plan! Let's drive there in March for Josh's birthday! The weather will be better and Cooper will be six months old by then. Six month olds will totally just sit quietly in their car seats and self entertain for 40 hours! He might even join in for a few rounds of 20 questions!

Idiots. We're total idiots. I see that now.

We spend our nights poured over maps, throwing out countless ideas that progressively get more unrealistic as time goes on. It starts out with things like well we could drive through the night while he sleeps in his car seat, taking sleep shifts in the passenger seat. A few exasperated hours later it turns into well maybe Harry Potter is actually real and I can just find a wizard and he'll make us a port key.
No matter how you slice it, it's just a long time of not being held, which is all Coop is interested in.

I take full responsibility for creating this hold-me monster. But I looooooove holding him. So there. And I figure pretty soon he'll be too busy running around peeing on people's pine trees to want to be held much so I better get my snuggles in now, while he can't fight back.

I make obsessive packing lists detailing the exact number of socks I might need. I scour the internet for tips on traveling with homemade baby food. I make panic trips to the thrift store because I don't really remember how cold it is in Minnesota in March but I think I remember it being akin to northern Alaska winter and I'm worried I don't have enough cold weather baby clothes. I scour the internet for inspirational quotes about overcoming adversity... In short, I panic. I'm more stressed out about this than I was about childbirth. At least labor was shorter and included more drugs.

Seriously this kid is not enthused about his car seat.

So please light a candle, throw a penny in a fountain, toss some salt over your shoulder, whatever it is that you do for good luck, please do it for us next week. :)

Sincerely,
The moron who thought it would be a good idea to drive her baby across the country