Almost One

Terran's birthday is coming up (July 9!). He has been a big part of our lives since I found out I was pregnant on Jan 3, 2005. For his first birthday, I thought of throwing a small party for him. But then, there's nap time conflicts. These days, he's up when his friends are sleeping and he's sleeping when everyone else is up. His aunt and uncle are also out of town so it wouldn't be too much fun. So instead, we decided that we will go to DC for the weekend. At the national zoo, his twin baby panda brother, Tai Shan, will also be celebrating his first.

My big question here is to drive or to take the train. Yahoo map shows that it will take us 3 hours to get to our destination. If everything goes well, that's not so bad. But what about traffic? How long does it actually take? I know that we will all have a difficult time sitting in traffic with Terran stuck in his carseat. Another option is to take the amtrak. According to the schedule, it will take us 2.5 hours direct from Trenton station. That's really good and we can also get up and walk around the train. He can jump on the chairs, and crawl up and down the isle like he did on our flight to LA. The negative side to this is that we will have to carry all our crap (and there's a lot of crap to carry when travelling with a baby). The ride is quite pricey; about $360 round trip for 2.

What should I do? How can I find out such information on the web. I should also ask friends and neighbors if they've driven to DC.