Flying the Friendly Skies and Longing for a Parachute

Katie R.

We travel to Ohio and Indiana pretty regularly, and for the most part the kids travel well.  Not this trip. 

When I have weeks, even months to plan a trip I still forget things, run around doing last minute errands and am basically a lunatic the day before we leave.  Because we were going for a funeral and decided the day before that we were all going to go I was off the chart crazy.  Then to add to the chaos we sold our CRV to one of Joe’s family members so we drove there and flew back so I had to think of packing enough for them to do in the car but whatever we brought had to stay because we couldn’t fly back with it. 

So of course I get the brilliant idea to leave at 3:00am because I thought that they would sleep all morning and we would be there by dinner.  So we left at 3:30 and Andrew stayed awake for hours, so when he finally slept Wes was wide awake.  No problem, I thought, I would put on some dvds and it will be fine so I inserted plug from new charger and the dvd player didn’t work.  At this point Joe and I realized it was going to be a long day.  We then stopped at Wal-Mart and get a new DVD charger (and DVD player in case the charger doesn’t work). We plugged it in and the sweet sound of Mater’s Tall Tales filled the car and all was right with the world again.  Of course this was one of a million stops so in the end we traveled for 17 hours, the kids were out of their mind cranky and I drank Dt. Dew which I gave up for lent.  Oh well they way I felt it’s a surprise I wasn’t chugging Jack Daniels and smoking cigarettes by the time we arrived.

Although we had to attend a funeral we were able to spend some time with the family and get a quick visit to the zoo in.  The boys had no idea we were there for a funeral so they had a great time with their family including the room of forts and tents that Aunt Nina and Uncle Jeff built for them. 

 

So they finally were caught up on their sleep and it was time to head home.  This was the first time we have flown with both kids and Joe thought it would be no problem. I knew he was wrong and guess who was right?  The first leg of the trip was horrible.  Wes wouldn’t sit still and when we had to force him to sit he screamed… like nails on a chalk board, high pitched at the top of his lungs screamed.  Andrew did fine until his ears popped and then he cried for a few minutes; and of course Wes took that time to really throw a fit so one was crying and one was screaming and I wanted to jump out of the plane- with or without a parachute.  Finally we landed and I avoided eye contact with everyone as they exited and walked out of the plane as quickly as I could with a kid, a diaper bag and a backpack.  I was filled with relief as we got off the plane;  however I seemed to have missed the discussion about the layover and when I went to look at our tickets realized we had a 3 hour layover it took every ounce of will power not to hand the kids to Joe and run to the nearest bar.    

So after 2 hours of walking with Wes in the stroller or chasing him around, I finally forced him to sleep.  He’s was so tired I though this is great he’ll sleep the whole flight, which of course did not happen.  He woke up about 15 minutes before we boarded; however, the airplane gods must have been with us because they were perfect on the 2^nd flight.  They sat quietly and watched a movie and people didn’t even know they were there.  I have no idea what changed maybe it was the dark, make it was that I looked so ragged they felt bad for me or maybe they are just night owls but whatever it was it worked.  We made it to the car looking like the Beverly Hillbillies with 2 cars seats, 3 suitcases, 2 backpacks and a stroller but we made it and they both fell asleep on the way home. 

So 5 days, 20 hours of driving, 5 hours in an airport, 3 hours of flying and we are home right back where we started.  The kids are tired , in fact Wes couldn’t even eat his lunch but they will soon be back to normal and ready to do it all again in 4 weeks.  I however am in complete denial that we will ever do it again.