I live in the middle of nowhere. This is a bit of an exaggeration, but it certainly feels like the middle of nowhere to me. It takes me a year and a half to drive to any store that is worth going to. Ok, fine, it takes me 45 minutes. It certainly feels like a year and a half with three kids in the backseat. Needless to say, we spend a lot of time in the car. Considering that I hate, hate, hate to drive and the kids hate, hate, hate being strapped into car seats it is pretty much guaranteed that I will need intense chocolate therapy by the time that we finally return home.

A typical trip with my three kids requires much planning and lots of caffeine. With three kids in tow, it really doesn’t matter whether I am going to the bank, taking Breuklyn to Pre-K or headed off on an all-day adventure. Any trip further than my mailbox at the end of the driveway requires a checklist of 1,037 things that I have to do before I can even put the car into drive. I can’t even imagine what it would be like to just find some matching flip flops, grab my keys and dash out the door. It is crazy to even think about Elizabeth and I getting on a train and going to Berlin without even a plan. That seems like a different Estee. The pre-diaper bag Estee and post-diaper bag Estee. I don’t even own a purse anymore that won’t comfortably fit three bottles, diapers in two different sizes and changes of clothes in three different sizes. Sigh.

Once we are actually in the car and are mobile, we enter a whole new dimension. This dimension is called the, Oh.My.Gosh I am going to go crazy from the noise coming from the backseat dimension. It transcends all levels of noise that can be created inside of a house because I am stuck in, basically, a large box on wheels while the kids sing their ABCs 1,097 times at varying levels of noise equal to that of a jetliner taking off. I used to be the really good mom who listened to Dora the Explorer CDs in the car, but then my CD player broke, (insert crazy dance of utter joy here) and now I have declared myself ruler of all music that is played inside of the car, via my iPod of course. I would have never survived one more rendition of “This Old Man… He played One… He played knick-knack on my thumb.” Breuklyn’s version includes a rousing chorus of, “He played kick-kat on my fum… with a frick-nack paddy smack that dog’s on the phone!!” Holy cow. It was cute the first ten times, but after the 567th time it loses its charm. Trust me.

The truly scary part of this whole scenario is that I find myself <gasp> sounding a lot like my parents. As soon as I yelled, “Just sit still and enjoy the ride!” I was instantly transported to a time long, long ago… ok, well about 15 years ago. I can vividly remember my siblings and I being squished into the backseat of the turquoise Tempo that my mom drove. We would torment each other from the moment that we all squeezed in until the moment that we were released. There was lots of kicking, pinching and teasing involved and we very quickly drove our parents crazy with the constant bickering. My dad had a brilliant solution. He allowed us to listen to Zig Ziglar motivational cassette tapes whenever we were in the car. To this day I can still hear Zig’s booming voice repeating, “Your attitude, not your aptitude, will determine your altitude.” We knew better than to interfere with the motivation. And when we would ask why we had to listen to the tapes repeatedly, we were answered with another fine Zig quote; “People often say that motivation doesn't last. Well, neither does bathing - that's why we recommend it daily.”

Now, I personally believe that I have had enough motivational speaking to last a lifetime, so I am thinking that I will get some foreign language tapes and work on my lifetime goal of learning Italian. Plus, I think it would be super cute if the kids said Ciao! In the meantime, I will continue my own classic blend of threatening motivation in order to survive road trips with the kids. My personal favorite is, “If you kick the back of my chair one more time, you will have to ride the rest of the way to Target up in the luggage rack!” Since this results in tumultuous laughter and cheers, I think I have some work to do.

That’s my take, what’s yours? How do you survive a noisy commute? Kids aren’t the only torture when it comes to driving. Construction, overall congestion and crazy drivers are enough to make me want to take a nap once I arrive at my destination. How do you survive it all?