Road Trippin'

I really wanted to find a picture I had of Davey riding in the car with his shirt off b/c that is almost always how he likes to travel in the car, but I couldn't find one.  Here he's listening intently to "Indian in the Cupboard" on our road trip to Oregon this summer.  Books on CD are AMAZING for road trips with kids, the library is full of them.  Also crucial to a good road trip is good music.  How to mesh your listening tastes to those of your children?  It's been a journey for us.
My column didn't come up on-line this week for those who follow (thanks mom, dad, Vicki, Sara, and Sharon:)  Here it is below:

One of the hardest adjustments I had to make when I became a mother was what kind of music I listened to in the car.  It was discombobulating to shelve my CD’s and let Baby Einstein, the Wiggles, and the Imagination Movers take over.  I was left driving around town dazed and confused wondering, “Who am I? And why am I listening to this stuff?”

I only had to look in the back seat at my three young children happily singing and dancing to know why.  The car can be a disastrous place for a kid to have a meltdown.  There’s nothing worse than being trapped in a small enclosed space with a screaming child while operating a moving vehicle.  So if the Wiggles’ song, “Fruit Salad” kept my kids happy and content for the duration of a car ride, I played it and played it loud.

I would try periodically to introduce my own music, but then I found myself having to answer difficult questions about the meaning of life.  The kids actually enjoyed listening to the Police, but became particularly fascinated with the song, “I Can’t Stand Losing You”.  Four year old Jonah at the time would ask, “But why is her brother going to kill him, and he’s six feet ten?  Why can’t he stand losing her?”  I would try and explain that the brother isn’t really going to kill him, it’s a figure of a speech, but no, it’s not a nice way to talk.  The singer doesn’t want to lose his girlfriend because he loves her and is sad it didn’t work out.  My answers only prompted more questions, and it would quickly go downhill from there.  I put the Wiggles back on.

My husband Travis started a new tradition in summer ’08 that has slowly broadened our kids’ musical taste.  He made a travel mix for our summer road trip.  The first one was very kid friendly: Alvin and the Chipmunks, Choo Choo Soul, the Hip Hop Professor, and Veggie Tales were all sampled.  He attempted to put one cross over song in the mix by the Might Be Giants, but the kids would boo and hiss whenever it came on.  We never got to listen to it fully.

Over the last few summers, the travel mix has slowly morphed into more grown up friendly fare.  The kids are getting older and we are getting savvier in picking music that we and the kids can both enjoy.  Travis and I keep a running list of song ideas all year based on the kids’ interests, movies they like, and songs that Travis and I like and think the kids would too.  The music mix has become a highlight of our road trips.  The kids know we’re working on it and they anticipate the big reveal when we hit the road.

This summer’s mix was our best yet.  We had the Go-Go’s, the Beatles, Queen, and we threw in some Miley Cyrus “Party in the USA” to keep it real for the kids.  Travis and I carefully chose a song or two that represented each of our children.  The 2010 World Cup theme song “Wavin’ Flags” was on there for Jonah who loves all things World Cup.  Davey’s into super heroes so the old Spiderman theme song from TV was chosen.  Payton performed to the “Gummy Bear” song in her hip hop class and was thrilled to see it made the cut.  Oh, and Weird Al Yankovic always makes the selection each year.  The kids LOVE him. 

We still pull out the mixes from previous years, and it’s like walking down memory lane: the ten hour road trip to Tahoe that was supposed to be five, camping in Yosemite, driving to Disneyland, and now our recent trip to Oregon to name a few.  We still have several more summers to go in making memories together.  And this mom is very grateful they are being themed by music we can all enjoy now.