Driving Miss Baby

Today we made the 9 hour (without stops) trip home from Virginia Beach. It started out pretty well. The usual stop of getting gas and the like. Analiese was in an exceptionally good mood and so we kept driving. She fell asleep shortly before her scheduled time to eat, so we persevered on. By the time we needed to make a bathroom break, she was awake and ready to eat. We got back on the rode in pretty good time. She was in a really good mood again. We played and laughed. She filled her pants so we had to stop once again to change her dirty diaper. The good mood didn't last for long. The car got old, so did the carseat and the position she was in. Pretty soon we were stopping for 2 or 3 minutes just so she could be out of the carseat and the car. This of course meant a 15-20 minute stop with getting off, finding a place, and getting back on. She was becoming increasingly upset and couldn't put herself to sleep. Eventually I put a movie in the laptop and let her watch it. Which of course, put her to sleep. Very much so like her mother in that aspect, only able to fall asleep sometimes to the television. She was able to stay asleep until we found a service plaza (60 miles later). Why they think they can put a service plaza every 50-60 miles and not expect people to need one sooner, I have no idea. Not to mention the type of restaurants they put in those plazas. Roy Rogers? Seriously. If I see another one of those and their old overcooked food I might just scream, but I'd rather not wake my sleeping child. She ate and had fun at the stop at the service plaza. Back on the road in about 40 minutes. Not much further to home at this point. Little did we know, further than we realized. Between construction causing one-lane traffic, traffic in general, gas stop, getting out of the car because the baby was going stircrazy, tolls and switching drivers; the 115 miles we had left turned into what seemed like 300. At one point, we had to simply get off at an exit where there were no shops in sight and pull into the grass so Analiese could get out of the car for a few minutes. After nursing her a bit, we headed on the last hour to home. She fell asleep and so did I, finally.
I attempted to transfer her right to bed when we got home but it was almost as if she knew we were home. The moment I laid her down, her eyes popped open. It was as though the mattress felt familiar. She looked around, spit out her pacifier, pushed up her belly and grinned up at me. As if to say "I'm home and I'm so happy. Let's go play with all my toys!" And so, we proceeded to play with all of her toys. She missed them so much. Now after being out of the car for more than 10 minutes, playing with her toys and having her nightime feeding, she is quite satisfied with her surroundings and sound asleep.