The Crazy Key Family: Hooray for headphones!

Just before David deployed to Iraq in 2005, he came home one night with a beautiful new van for me. It was so pretty. And I was not even upset - I never said I wouldn't want to drive a van. And when Jessa was born, I was driving my cool new Beetle. Having a van with all that room was so exciting!! AND the best part was the awesome entertainment system. Oh yes, it had a DVD player built in. No more trying to dangle the portable one from the back of the seat and trying to convince a 13 month old not to kick it or eject the movie while I am trying to drive.

One cool feature of this fancy van's entertainment center was wireless headphones. Wow! This meant that I could drive and listen to the radio while baby Jessa watched a movie. I was very happy about this prospect. See, as great as classical music is for babies and as educational as Baby Einstein was, those movies always made me drowsy. Not good while driving, wouldn't you agree??

Jessa's initial impression of the headphones was not as I had hoped. I was leading my horse to the beautiful, high tech headphones, and she was not willing to drink! (did that even make sense? you get my point, right??)

So I continued to drive around listening to her movies. I know all the Elmo's World episodes by heart. La-di-da-di-da. La-di-da-di-da, I know every word to that song! Fast Forward: Spencer is born, and Jessa's headphone strike continues. It was not as big a deal because now baby Spencer could at least listen to the music now.

Just before David deployed to Iraq in 2008, he showed up with a new van for me again. (I know that I am incredibly spoiled!) So we traded the old one without ever using the fancy headphones.
The new new van has 2 screens and 2 DVD players, so the kids could even watch different things! And again, I could listen to the radio, IF they had their headphones on. AND it has Sirius, so I can listen to really fun stuff, IF they were willing to wear headphones.

Now, many Moms would say that I should have given them an ultimatum and said no headphones, no movie. BUT they are SUCH awesome travelers. We have sometimes spent 12 hours in a car in one day. So I really do not mind them watching or listening to whatever they want. There are just times when I would like to hear a song that is not sung by a Disney Princess or Big Bird.

Well, I am happy to report that after owning a van that has wireless headphones for more than 4 years, my babies are in live with their headphones! Woo-hoo! The last trips between Illinois and Georgia have been awesome! We still listen to Kids Stuff on Sirius together a lot of the time. We all enjoy singing along to those fun songs, but most all the movies they watched involved HEADPHONES!