Our Family In Flight

We've been saving for this trip for quite awhile now. We thought we would go in September, but the stars aligned and May turned out be a great month to visit family. Yes, we flew. Yes, we had an early flight. Yes, we took all three carseats plus luggage. Yes, we knew it was going to be crazy. Regardless of how well I thought I was prepared...I wasn't.

We stayed the weekend with my parents to make our early morning trip to the airport a tad shorter. The alarm sounded just 2 hours after I fell asleep...2am. Not a good start. We packed up the van and painfully woke the kids from their slumber to buckle them into their seats. I hate to wake a sleeping baby. We kept them in pj's hoping the long ride would lull them back to sleep. Nope! All three were wide awake as if things were perfectly normal. We were running late (about a half hour later than we wanted to get to the airport) and as we were dressing the kids, frantically unloading luggage from the van, and bagging our carseats... we saw the sun beginning to rise. Way too early for us.

We easily checked our suitcase and carseats, sailed through security, and almost ran to our gate. Whew! As we board, we see the faces of everyone on the plane and know what they're thinking..."Oh no, I have to listen to those babies the whole flight!" Yeah, that's right mister! You get the pleasure of listening to my three sweet angels from heaven the whole 3 hour flight! I didn't actually talk to anyone. I was all about getting A to get the flight attendant to get us some warm drinks for our boys. As I got the bottles out of the backpack, I'm thinking I need a snack for E, sanitizing wipes to clean our space, and oh my word, O is so extremely heavy. Just then our bags are whisked away because we were in the first row behind first class, therefore, no seat to store our things. But wait! I need to sanitize! Oh well. I felt the pressure of the entire plane waiting on us. The flight attendant placed our bottles in a pitcher with warm water in order to warm the milk . She then placed it at our feet so we could get it out to feed the babies. Two seconds later another flight attendant picked it up, gave us the milk, and practically ran from us. But wait! I need it warm! Oh well. The pressure, everyone's eyes. I'll just be quiet, and hopefully, my kids will be too. I was soooo wrong.

W was quite distraught with not having his morning bottle warm. The crying began.

E loved flying. Everything seen out the window was pure amazement. She laughed and clapped with turbulence. The oj was such a treat. She loved everything until the descent, which is when the pressure hurt her ears. A painful cry began. I tried to help her with several different tricks, but she wasn't going to do a thing...but hold her ears and cry.

Here's A doing a fabulous job trying to make W somewhat happy, but nothing worked.
He cried and cried and cried.

Just before descent, we had a bit of relief. W discovered the sanitizing wipes and formed a close bond. He enjoyed chewing on them for several minutes. This seemed to make him happy so we went with it. We also knew that W wanted to be free, not held. So placing him in an empty seat made him happy too. However, this didn't make the flight attendant happy...and she let us know. O fell asleep for about 30 minutes and E watched a little bit of "Cewee and Bob Gamato" (Celery and Bob Tomato, which is Veggie Tales).

Corralling the kids.

We had a 40 minute layover in Dallas, which meant run as fast as you can because you will most likely miss your flight. After getting all our gear into our stroller, we found out that our next plane is 4 concourses away! What! It's the same airline! We briskly walked down our concourse, took the elevator up a floor, and walked back down the concourse to catch the shuttle. After seeing most of the airport, we take another elevator, and practically run to the gate. Lots of people, confusion...Las Vegas? What? Our flight had been canceled. Arg! This was the beginning of a nightmarish 3 hour layover in Texas.

I packed food for the boys, but only snacks for E. So we paid a fortune for a morsel of food. Feeding the boys in the stroller wasn't pleasant...food everywhere. Then the bathroom with the self flushing toilets was sheer pleasure. Imagine E wrapping her arms around my neck and her legs around my waist refusing to go anywhere near this loud monstrous toilet."No mommy! No! I don't want to! I don't have to go!" I don't know why I didn't think to cover the sensor! But my extremely sensitive child survived as she clung to me for dear life.

Corralling the kids was a difficult task. A went one way with W and I went another with O. E divided her time between looking out the window and roaming with brothers. This quickly became stressful when I had to watch our luggage, E in various spots, and O all over the place. Not to mention the fact that it was distressing to see all the kids touch everything...fall onto the ground (including faceplants), roll themselves on the floor, attach themselves to the windows, or pick things off the ground to eat. Yuck!

How cute! Literally, a few minutes before our next flight, W fell asleep. Drats. Now I have to wake a sleeping baby and he'll be awake for the entire flight. More crying. Not cute.

The next flight attendant should be fired by how she treated us. She was so rude as A tried to get answers to his questions, she was annoyed by having to deal with us, and then she got angry because we had two children on laps. She actually told us we couldn't get on the plane and drug us back up the ramp. She practically yelled at us, had a heated discussion with another employee and then threw our tickets back at us. "Just get on!" We kept our cool, but had a few words for her. She separated us, which made passing toys and snacks a little tricky. Thanks to those sitting between us, we were able to make it through another flight.

We arrived in the Beehive State safely, sleepily, and with our nerves tied up in knots. It was so good to see the smiles of family to greet us.

Stay tuned for more.