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The Little Green Frog…now living in my throat

Traveling with infants. Oh the joy. Greetings from Germany, where we just attended a fabulous wedding (the girls were seriously a big attraction) and are on our way down to see Oma and Opa (and hit Oktoberfest, of course). So far we’ve logged 500 kilometers in the rental car. And we’ve probably only had screaming for about 100 of them. I consider that pretty good. Even if all three of us are hoarse. Because what do you do when your kid is crying and you are driving? Sing. Badly and Loudly.

A crying infant is highly annoying, especially when she’s just yelling out of boredom. I’ve tried to time my drives to coincide with naptime, which is how we’ve had 80% quiet time. However, that other 20% becomes a battle of safety versus emotion. No I don’t like hearing them cry. But I can’t safely operate a moving vehicle and reach behind and hand out Cheerios. Or find binkies. Or do really anything. Other than try to out- do them, while keeping both hands on the wheel and both eyes on the road.
I’ve only found two things that do it: “Ah-Gunk went the little green frog,” a song that I apparently learned in kindergarten and used to sing to my sister to make her stop crying (it worked in 1976 and is still working today), and “Everybody talk loud,” a Sesame Street skit that involves me yelling at varying volumes. Both songs make them literally freeze. And smile. For exactly the length of the song. Then it’s right back to hollering.
It becomes a battle of the wills, doesn’t it? How long can Mommy sing before she pulls off at a rest stop to find scattered pacifiers and toys? Isn’t it maybe less painful in the long run to just get there, crying or not? I think this is one of those questions for which the answer changes minute by minute. Sorry, girls, that your mother isn’t more sympathetic to your plight, stuck in the back seat, facing backwards, bored out of your minds. But she’s an old lady, complete with her own lumbar support pillow, who is just trying to navigate her way through a foreign country as quickly and safely as possible. The one they should be really annoyed with is their father, who had to suddenly fly to Germany the night before our scheduled departure, then suddenly to New York the morning of our drive to Nuremberg and now might be able to meet us at his parents’ house. After all, he could have been in the backseat passing out cookies if he weren’t so stinking clever.

Dr. Lara Zibners, Sep 27, 2010

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