Thursday, May 7, 2009

Monroe 1st Plane Ride

I found myself walking around our house Sunday night taking inventory of all the things that I didn't get finished and how the next time I walked into the house it would be with my husband, 2 children and my in-laws. I felt like everything that I did accomplish was mitigated by the fact that there were so many loose ends still dangling. Oh how I wished I had another day. I called Scott and told him that I felt like I needed to stay an extra day and he said that that would be fine, but when I called Southwest, it was going to be too expensive to switch tickets, so I conceeded to coming home bright and early Monday morning. I had no other reasonable choice...I stayed up too late...4:45am trying to get the house ready to leave. I didn't want to go to sleep but I figured an hour was better than nothing. I should have stayed awake. I ended up over sleeping and I woke up at 7. I was already supposed to be at my mom's house, to pick up the kids and should have been getting ready to leave for the airport. It was a pretty big ordeal. At first I just called Scott and told him that I was going to miss my flight, and then I called SW one more time. They would let me fly standby, but they could not guarantee me a seat on the plane without charging me A TON. The idea of sitting in the airport for hours with 2 kids did not seem appealling, fortunately, Michelle had spent the night so she took me to the airport while my mom got my kiddos ready and met me there. Thank you Mom & Michelle. I couldn't have done without either of you.

Thanks to the stress of the morning I was moving slower than normal, not just physically but mentally. It didn't even occur to me until we were sitting on the plane that this was Monroe's 1st plane ride. And this was Beckett's 1st plane ride as a non-lap child. And this was my first plane ride with 2 children all to myself. I have always been very lucky when it comes to flying, yes Beckett was always good but the real blessing is that I have always sat by amazingly helpful and understanding people. This flight followed suit. I sat by a woman named Sand, she is a grandmother from O'Fallon, MO and she was travelling to Detroit for business. Within 1 minute of sitting down she had open arms and was helping me juggle my 2 kiddos. I know that most people wouldn't have just handed their child over to a complete stranger, but I couldn't do it by myself. Monroe did great. The only little hiccup was take-off and landing. I just nursed her and that was fine. I think the harder onoe to handle was Beckett.

Like I said earlier, this was Beckett's first flight as a non-lap child. I bring this up again because it had such a significant impact on our flight. He did not want to wear his seatbelt. He wanted to be held. But apparently once you reach the age of 2 you lose those luxuries. And the flight attendant would not let me forget it. I cinched B's seatbelt but he would find a way to slide down so that the seatbelt was laying across his belly then he would cry that he was uncomfortable, well after about 15 minutes he figured out how to take off his seatbelt. And everytime he would do that the stewardess would come over and say, "he needs to be in a seatbelt, the captain still has the fasten seatbelt sign on." REALLY. 3 months ago he could sit on my lap for an entire flight and now he can't be held for 1 minute. Everything got a little better once the seat belt was turned off, he sat on Sandy's lap and looked out of the window then she let him play with her Nintendo DS. Between Sandy and my mom's homemade peanut butter cookies Beckett was relatively good. That is until the fasten seatbelt lilght was flicked back on. It was as if he knew he was restricted (and he wasn't having any of that) I just wanted to hold him but I couldn't, he sat there and SCREAMED. It was horrible. Fortunately, Sandy was there and she held Monroe while I tended to Beckett and attempted to hold him while he was strapped in. I was very grateful that it was only an hour flight.

Beckett & his PB Cookies


Yay for us for making it through our first flight together.

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1 comment:

Johanna said...

I feel your pain on the plane. EZ has know taken quite a few trips with his own seat and he still fights putting on his seat belt. Flight attendants who give you a hard time about it obviously dont have kids. We just keep telling EZ the pilot is going to kick him off the plane and he wont be able to see Grandpa Steve or whoever it is we are visiting. It's cruel but it seems to work alright.