The Friendly Skies

This weekend we went up to Maryland to visit my wife's family. I love to travel. And I love to travel by air. However, for me, plane travel is usually pretty stressful. Sure I have the fleeting concern that something important might fall off the plane mid flight. And how can you not get on a plane without thinking, at least momentarily, about 9/11. But most of my stress...say 90%... occurs before I even step board on the plane.

The first big obstacle is getting to the airport on time. I am most always convinced that we are going to miss our flight. No matter how much time we allow, we always seem to leave the house "late". This was the case when it was the two of us and has gotten progressively worse with the addition of each child. So right as we leave the house I am having mild freak outs.

With self check in that portion of the experience has gotten less stressful, only to be replaced by the enhanced security screenings. Many times the lines can be reeeeeeaaalllly long which heightens my anxiety about missing the flight. On top of that, once we reach the security check, the stress rises as I try to keep track of all our stuff. This trip was particularly bad because it was the first plane trip for the four of us.

Lil Pumpkins stroller and car seat needed to be put on the belt. My bag, my shoes, my jacket, the baby bag, the wife's bag, shoes, purse.....ok you go through with the baby..Wonder pea stay with me...how many bins do we have...four....dear god...ok Wonder pea stay right there while I put these on the belt....ok now lets walk through..."Sir she needs to talk off her shoes"...oh right i forgot her shoes....."and her jacket"...right right ok...(this after Wonder pea went through the detector and then came back around to me...she did that twice)....ok everything is off and we both go through, Wonder pea now being scanned for the 3rd time...she wanted to go back for a forth...

Ok now that THAT is over we get to collect our four bins, stroller and car seat and put ourselves back together.

Whew ok....the big, huge amounts of stress are now behind us. We are here, through security, we have time to spare and oh good, our plane isn't even here yet.

So begins the next stressful part of the trip: the actual flight.

This was a 2 and a half hour flight and Lil Pumpkins first flight; it could go either way. This could be super stressful or moderately so; even if the kids are fine the whole trip, you have no idea IF this will be the case...so you are on high alert for when they may suddenly get nutty.

Fortunately the kids getting nutty were across the isle. Lil Pumpkin was pretty laid back the whole time. Although why do babies like to load up their diapers minutes into a flight? It's like they are challenging the parents. So caaaan you.....change my poo while on a plane with only inches of room while being very subtle as to not alert other passengers as to what you are doing .....hummm...riddle me that Batman??! Anyways he was great and Wonder pea only had a small melt down when we were descending; the air pressure does a job on her ears.

So yay! We didn't miss our flight, we made it through security with all our junk, the kids didn't freak out on the flight and nothing important fell off the plane in mid air!! Good trip!