Doing the Plane Thing Alone

We've done the airplane with kids. A lot. We lived in Japan and we flew home with Jack several times which involves usually two plane changes and about 24 hours of flying. It was never fun at all, and we never enjoyed it. I did it alone a lot too.

Somehow, it is just next to impossible now to do ANY flight alone with two. I don't really see why it is so much harder because Jack is now at the stage where he isn't much work on planes (well, this is RELATIVE) and Sam is at the age Jack was when I used to do this all the time and go a lot farther. Somehow, though, it is just way way sicker now.

On the flight home from Denver, we arrived at the airport at about 5 for our 7 o'clock flight. I checked my bags outside, already had my boarding passes, so I just had to do security. Lines weren't too long, but still it makes me start to sweat to do that security thing alone. For those of you who don't try it often, it involves: getting up to the lane, taking off Jack's shoes, taking off my shoes, putting Jack's backpack on him, putting my purse on my shoulder, putting the diaper bag on the other shoulder, picking Sam up, moving the back seat of the stroller to the front, folding the stroller, putting in on the conveyor, putting Sam's huge bulky car seat on the conveyor, putting everything else I just mentioned into boxes, having Jack push them through while I hold Sam, then going through the metal detector and then coming out at the other end just to put all this back together into my workable moving travel station. It's awesome. For those of you who don't know, though, my new trick is to say "My stroller won't fit through" and then they will take it from you and manually search it and for me it saves a lot of stress from having to fold it and put it up and down and all.

Anyhow, after that we went down to the tram, took it to our concourse, and this was at about 5:20 pm. Still pretty early. I check the screen and our flight is delayed until 8:35 and I am just so happy I could scream. Since I now have three hours to kill in this one concourse, we go get some dinner at two different places and sit and eat. The place has no high-chairs, which is just unheard of, but whatever. I feed Sam in his stroller and at least four other women walk in and look around quizzically for a high-chair. What Denver airport was thinking I have no idea. That kills about 20 more minutes and we walk down to our gate.

The next 2 hrs and 30 minutes are so so long because my kid, Samuel Michael, is nuts. He has started walking and now does something that approximates running even. He has no fear or idea of boundaries at his age. The first time I went to sit at the gate I went to our gate and it was in the middle of the long concourse area. This was a terrible idea b/c as soon as I let him out he just starts hauling tail in one direction or the other and I have no choice but to chase him. My stuff stays in the middle and at the beginning Jack is still being totally crazy too, running and trying to do gymnastics and all kinds of stuff. So, I know this isn't going to work because I can't get more than about 5 yards away from Sam which means Jack keeps getting like 30 yards away and making me incredibly nervous and someone is going to call security because all our stuff is unmanned. So, I do what I usually do and take them to find a gate that is not being used so there will be less people. We go down to the end of the concourse and I settle Jack in coloring and then spend about the next 1.5 hours chasing Sam. Everyone around seems to think it is hilarious to watch but I am really not having fun at all and my feet really hurt by the end of it. At one point he ran into the men's bathroom and I had to go in and get him.

After a while I am tired of that too and we go back near our gate to wait it out and of course the plane is even later than expected at it is like 8:45 when we get on and this is about 45 minutes past Jack's bedtime and an even more imperative 1 hr 45 min past Sam's. I figure he is exhausted from running and will fall asleep, so I'll only have to mostly entertain Jack since he is likely to stay awake and want to do all his little activities like read, color, stickers, snacks, etc.

The most stressful part of the whole thing for me is getting from the end of the jet way to our seats. I have no stroller and I have to hold a 15 lb bulky car seat and a 25 lb baby and keep tabs of three bags and one four year old and it is just impossible, to tell the truth. Luckily, some man helped me carry my car seat. But the end of the jet way is always my most stressful part of a flight if I am alone because it is really hard to fold up the stroller you are using after you have taken the baby that was in it out. Where do you put the baby during the folding? Especially in the case of this baby, who is highly likely to bolt in any direction. In this case I pinned Sam down to the floor with both my legs while I folded the stroller up. It was not pretty and there was a huge line of people behind me waiting. Oh well.

Once we get on the flight Jack falls asleep as soon as it takes off and I am congratulating myself on how I now won't have to deal with any kids at all on this flight and will be able to read. Sam is sitting in his car seat and I give him his milk and we take off in peace. I am not really going to go into the crying and all but lets just say in all honestly, it took two hours to fly home and he cried a lot of it. He has to cry in his car seat to fall asleep, so I try to look away from him and look aloof at the people that are staring, but it got out of hand and I finally took him out after about 20 minutes of fussing that turned into screaming. He was happy as long as I didn't try to put him back in. During the final descent into Houston I put him back and he started crying for the ten minutes it took to land and then about 10 seconds after the plane touched down he fell asleep. Typical.

Now I have to get two sleeping kids off this airplane and it is 11:45 at night so whichever wakes up is going to be grumpy as hell. I have a double stroller but I have to use one seat for the car seat, but I decide to try to put them both in there and wear the car seat like a backpack. I tell the flight attendant that I have to leave one sleeping child on the plane to go set up my stroller and she says sure and it ends up there are two other women in this same situation. I go out and try to carry Jack out there and he of course wakes up and starts crying because he says, "I want to fly." Since he slept the whole time he thinks we never flew and thus he missed out on doing "all his fun things and getting his snack and drink." He is highly pissed about this. A lady and man a couple of rows ahead of me has very sweetly hung around to try to help me get Sam out of the plane and we decide to keep him in his car seat and carry him out. He stays asleep and the Southwest lady gives us a wheelchair to put his car seat in which is pretty smart if you ask me. So, off we go to meet Keith, one double stroller, two kids (one crying and one sleeping), one car seat, one wheelchair, and three bags later.

Here is how the story would go if I had flown alone: go through security with one backpack, get there early, eat at a nice restaurant since I have time, sit down at the gate and read my book for the three hour wait, get on the plane, sit down, read and sleep, go home.

Honestly, if we ever have three I think I'm out of the air travel alone game. It just seems too horrible.