Crying Babies on a Plane!

This month, Monkey took his first airplane trip and I spent 3 whole days away from him. Family vacation time/visiting grandparents time came and went, mostly without a hitch.

Monkey did surprisingly well on the flights...and we had 4 of them with him. Since we had to travel across the country, we had a 1 hour flight and a 5 hour flight in each direction. Thankfully, after each flight we had people approach us to tell us how impressed they were with him. YAY! 

No one wants to be the mommy with the screaming baby that can't be calmed. We found that our solution did not lie in the realm of pharmaceutical land, or toy land, or walking/cooing/soothing land. Our solution came in the form of food, and lots of it. I swear, Monkey got more bottles on the plane rides than he does in 2 straight days normally. HOWEVER...it kept him happy. Generally speaking, the pattern was play, fuss, food, play, fuss, food, sleep, diaper change (and possibly outfit change from spit up) and repeat. That's OK, if it means that we had one of the best behaved children on the plane.

Once we arrived on the opposite side of the country, we had a car ride. Great, Monkey's favorite thing (not really). It's not my favorite thing to do with him either, especially when the car seat my mother borrowed rocked and moved to the point of me thinking that him riding in my lap would be safer!

Monkey loved seeing his grandparents, and we loved driving through some of our favorite areas with him. Then Ben had to head back home for work, while Monkey and I stayed behind because I had a wedding to attend. Not fun. Well, the time before I left for the wedding was fine...leaving Monkey was not. That and the wedding I went to had batshit crazy difficult people in attendance...but don't they all?

I personally think that someone should have smacked some sense in to me when I said that I was going to get to relax on my weekend away from the baby. I slept less that weekend than I do in a full 24 hours at home with Monkey. The maid of honor and I were so worried about getting the bride everything she wanted that neither of us really slept. To the point where I didn't think I had gotten enough tablecloths and lost sleep over THAT! Wow.

But, the wedding turned out wonderfully, everyone most people were happy, and my friend got what she wanted, so isn't that what counts? And when I got Monkey back, well, that was one of the best moments with him so far...for me and my parents.

The way home was a little more difficult than the way there, though. For one, Ben wasn't there to help me. Two, I essentially hadn't slept in 3 days, but especially not the night before coming home, since I had to be up at 3:30 am to catch a flight to pick up Monkey before starting the cross-country flight. Then I didn't put Monkey in his sling (as I should have) so my arms felt like they were about to fall off. On top of that, he went through FIVE outfits that day...from a variety of bodily functions.

When we ended our 5 hour flight, we almost missed the 1 hour flight because we had not been allowed to land for an hour due to weather. So here I was, sprinting through the airport with an infant (who was throwing up because of being jostled so much while full of milk), a duffel bag, and a rolling duffel that refused to stay on it's wheels. We made it on the plane because of the baby. They actually called the plane back because I had Monkey (and probably looked as though I would go all crazy if they told me I couldn't get on when I could see the plane 5 feet from the jet way). Not to mention after I got on, about 10 other people got on too...you'd think when that many planes are delayed they might hold outgoing flights just a bit.

But we made it home, my bag (that didn't make it on the plane) was delivered the next day, and we are all a bit worse for wear happy that we made the trip.