Don't tell Dad what put me to sleep!

On the second day in the car, Sam seemed really tired around 11. We thought we'd just keep driving for a while and stop for lunch after he woke up. Finally at about 1, we stopped since he never nodded off. After lunch I was convinced he would be snoring by the end of the on-ramp. He wanted to watch a DVD, but I figured he would maybe be able to stay awake for a couple minutes and then nod off.

We broke out a new DVD that had an episode of Dora on it (which Sam has seen on TV once or twice, but never been too enamored with). He stayed awake through the entire episode. He eyes would be SO heavy and about to close for good, when something would strike him as funny and we would hear a burst of laughter. And then the episode ended.......and he asked to watch it again. And then again. And then again. And then again. And continued to will himself awake to see what happened to Dora (like he didn't already know that they would find the fire truck at the top of snowy mountain after going through the alligator lake and the blue railroad tunnel and foil all of Swiper's attempts to swipe it).

It was now nearly 2 hours since we had finished lunch, and we getting closer to our destination, and I felt he really needed to sleep. I decided to intervene and get Dora off that screen so he would finally give up on staying awake. I tried to just take the DVD player away, but I could see that was just going to make for a hysterical, awake child. So I talked him into watching his Caterpillar movie about dozers, excavators, etc. And the picture shows what he looked like within 2 minutes of hitting play on that DVD...