Without a doubt, I'd take 2 cars. For a hundred reasons. It will be impossible to time stops convenient for all of you. In one car, you stop for the girls to use the bathroom, they will wake up a sleeping baby. In your own car, even if you pull over with them, you won't have as much noise. That goes for drive time as well. 4 and 5 year olds just don't sleep as much in the car as parents would like them to. They will play, sing, and fight, all of which will keep the baby from sleeping when you want him to. Like dogs in the neighborhood, one starts yelling, they all chime in! It's going to be hard, but that would not stop me if the trip were important to me. I think I'd try to get him using a sippy cup or bottle or sport bottle w/straw -something else he can drink from besides me (if you are breastfeeding). It will help "get him by" for a little while until you can stop. Mine would drink from a straw at 6 mos, they really pick it up quick. Travel as much during sleeping times as possible. Stash some interesting new toys to take out as needed, things he can explore for the first time. Expect to set next to him a lot, most of the time he is awake. Keep diapers and wipes in the side pocket of the door, or something, where you can get to them very quickly. Take some plastic bags to dispose of them. During big driving days, dress him in layers to help keep him as comfortable as possible in heat or air conditioning. If you don't have them, get shades for the windows. When we travel, the sun always seems to be in the wrong place for the baby to go to sleep or street or headlights wake them up just as they are almost asleep! Very frustrating, so shade them well. Keep an old blanket with you, so if you stop at a park or rest area (or any grassy spot) you can let him stretch. When we've travelled with our kids that young, nothing settled them down better than a chance to be on the back or tummy, change them in the fresh air to "air out" that tired bottom. And take a really big bottle of Excedrin -you'll probably need it LOL!

Cars depreciate so fast that they really shouldn't be considered positive equity unless you paid cash for brand-new. So I wouldn't have bought the GAP ins, UNLESS $1K might be difficult financially for you in an emergency. In that case, you're paying $150/yr for $1K/yr protection. Not a bad deal, but perhaps not essential. I have the Cilajet brand of clear coating on our Edge, and one issue with this particular product is that you can't just rinse the car off, the way I was accustomed to. If you do, you have to dry it immediately, preferably with microfiber towels (not cheap) because water spots on the Cilajet. I don't know if your brand might be easier to care for than that. We park our car outside and keep them a long time, so I wanted to keep the paint/interior from fading. You need to read the instructions for your particular coating and follow them faithfully; the warranty can be voided by use of improper products. If you like to keep your car looking good, then who's to say paying the $$ for the coating was a bad idea? One thing I have noticed is the exterior seems to get a lot less dirty than our previous (uncoated) cars! An extended warranty can be useful in these days of computerized features. We had a Hyundai Santa Fe and the only problem we ever did have was with some of the computer sensors. The extended warranty was useful for minor things as well, so we never regretted getting it. Had it been a Honda I wouldn't have bothered with an extended warranty, however. Hondas are extremely reliable (my family all own various models). Toyota is also very reliable so it's probably 50/50 whether it was a good idea to buy the EW or not. But it is very true newer cars have A LOT of computers. We were told the Edge has over 23 of them! Be aware that all those whiz-bangs eat up battery life. Try not to leave your car more than a week without running it long enough to recharge the battery (such as leaving on a trip and parking in the long-term lots). If the battery is allowed to go completely dead a simple jump won't work. I'm going to post separately here, excerpts from an article today in the WSJournal about the battery issue. Or, talk to the dealer service dept. once you feel comfortable about the quality of their advice - we bought our Ford specifically because the service dept. we go to, is one of the very few I've ever trusted of ANY mfg.

I am going to be blunt, and you will probably all hate me, but we do have freedom of speech here. This thread to me just seems so dated. Dealerships are "woke" to the idea that women make most of the car decisions, women do more internet research than men, women are buying cars with their own money not their husband's, and that having a sales experience that uses intimidation and pressure tactics hasn't worked for years. My friend is a saleswoman at a Honda dealership, and I have sent friends to her. Her role is to go over all the various options of the different models and see what the customer prefers. Yes she of course wants to close the deal, but car manufacturers realized years ago that the hard sell doesn't close the deal nearly as well as the reasoned, educational sell. Think of when you go in a department store, and the salesperson is hovering; you just want to leave. Same with cars, and the dealerships realized this years ago. They also realized years ago that a pleasant purchasing experience can mean the customer will come back for repairs (where the big profit is) and for their next car, and will refer their friends as well. For all these reasons, the intimidation sell is over, and has been for a long time. The purchase price has a little leeway, but since you can find prices all over the country on the internet, there's not much hard bargaining there. There is more negotiating--if you want it--over the trade-in (a more subjective evaluation than the purchase price of a car), and extras like winter mats and free oil changes. But the era of pushy salesman, and pressure tactics is over, as should be the era of the nervous woman with fluttering hands who'd rather do anything than buy a car at the scary dealership, and needs a man to accompany her. To the OP - feel your power. You are the purchaser of a car and the dealerships want your business. Walk in there knowing you are a powerful intelligent woman about to spend your money how you would like to spend it on the car you want. We are almost in 2019 at this point.

Nicole - thanks for your confirmation. Yep - it was a $10,000 increase - it's nuts. I honestly thought the insurance company made a mistake. My previous car was a MB SUV and I had no intention of trading it in until I took it in for a warranty service in August 2020 - during Covid. A salesman in the showroom approached me and said he had a customer who was looking for a model like mine - it was a 550 ML diesel with 45,000 miles. Diesel's are hard to find and he offered me a great price - cash - and if i picked another car from one of their 6 dealerships he would add another incentive. The only catch was that the buyer wanted the car ASAP since he wanted to tow his boat to Florida. The owner of the dealerships was there and when I told him that our family had bought or leased 7 cars from their dealerships in the last 10 years he upped the offer. You never really know if you've gotten the best possible deal when talking with a car salesmen but I think I did all right. So my new car is 14 months old and only has 5000 miles on it. I hope nothing ever happens to it because I wouldn't want to be car shopping right now