You Decide: Spontaneous Mama or Desperate Mother?

Shortly after Lucianna's broken bone scare in January, she graduated to her toddler bed at the pediatrician's recommendation.  Yes (sigh!), I listened to the doc's advice and made the move - much earlier than anticipated.  In parenting, there is never a shortage of learning through trial and error.  As eager beaver parents, Mike and I moved Lena into her big girl bed at two and half, so the second time around our plan was to wait as long as possible with Lucianna.  We were secretly hoping to keep her in the crib for...forever.  Yet for safety's sake, we abandoned all desires to keep Lucy in her cage crib, and converted her crib into a toddler bed (a step we skipped right over with Lena).  God bless her, Lucianna is like a happy bull in a china shop; she would certainly be more dangerous in a real big girl bed than she was in her crib - which she was routinely exiting via her signature hoist and jump over the railing move- yikes!

Fast forward six weeks to March 7, another unseasonably warm day in Jersey.  We spent the morning playing outside but had some errands to run in the afternoon.  After lunch, I loaded the girls into the car and off we went to Target - an 11 minute ride.  Surprise!  Half way to the store, I took a peek in the rear view mirror to discover both girls knocked out.   I have to digress to fill in the necessary background info:  (1)  my girls rarely sleep in the car and if they do, it's always 55 minutes in to an hour long ride, (2)  ever since the toddler bed transition, Lucy has given up her much needed (for her and ME!)  two hour afternoon nap (boo...hiss) and (3)  I have never, not even once, had to be the mom driving around her block six times so the kids could sleep.  Enter new territory courtesy of the perfect storm.  

So, what do I do?  As fickle as I can be, I immediately knew there was no way on this Earth that I was waking up Lucy...so here comes Target...there goes Target.  There I was, driving - aimlessly.   At first, I thought maybe I would just drive for 20 minutes and loop back to the store.  But, then I realized that our car was only getting closer and closer to those crashing blue waves on the sands of the Jersey shore.  Let the adventure begin!  

We ended up in Sea Isle City on the beach for about 15 minutes but the wind was too much for Lena who was not dressed for a windy day at the beach.  

So, I spied an awesome playground where we spent the next hour just playing with no plans!

So, you decide:  Spontaneous or Desperate?  

Either way you slice it, my rested kids had a fun-filled, playful adventure on a gorgeous March day at the Jersey shore.  

And, yes - Target still got our money...after all, it was on the way home.