Babes on a Plane

Unless you follow me on Instagram, you probably don’t know that I flew to New York at the beginning of the month to attend my grandfather’s funeral. It was a bittersweet trip—so wonderful and special to be back in my beautiful hometown and visit with my grandma (who I haven’t seen since Forrest was a newborn) and relatives I don’t see often and reflect on my grandpa’s life and memories of him, but very hard to say goodbye to my sweet, kind, loving grandpa.

I plan to write more about my grandpa and the funeral soon, but in the meantime, I’m trying to recover from the PTSD brought on by my flight out to New York with 2 children and no husband. Thank you, everything that is holy, for sending my sister-in-law Nicole out on the same flight as us, because I honestly think I would have given up, turned around, and headed back home after making it roughly 12 feet into the Salt Lake City airport. Two car seats, a stroller, three carry-ons, a stuffed-to-the-gills diaper bag, a 3-year old hell-bent on reciting his newly-memorized address to every person he saw, and a 6-month old who was none too pleased about being woken up at 5 AM to head to the airport. A winning formula for a happy flight in anyone’s book, I’m sure.

Feast your eyes upon the familial bliss of our cross-country flight, during which:

1) The lady at the ticket counter couldn’t figure out how to print Darcy’s boarding pass, but spent a good 20 minutes trying, during which Forrest devoted every morsel of energy he possessed to attempting to climb down the luggage conveyor belt.

2) They realized as we were boarding that we were seated in the exit row (a no-go with children), and held up the entire flight trying to figure out new seating arrangements, aaaaand . . .

3) Failed to find us seats together, placing Forrest and my sister-in-law 5ish rows behind me and Darcy, who were seated . . .

4) Between two men. Which wouldn’t be that big of a deal exceeept . . .

5) Girlfriend wanted to nurse basically nonstop. Breastfeeding in a tiny airplane seat between a middle-aged dude (who, I really don’t mean to be rude, but was not a petite fellow and took up like 1/3rd of my seat space, making nursing in a tiny airplane seat even more uncomfortable than it already would have been) (and also, I glanced over at his computer screen once and he was googling “douche canoe” and I still haven’t figured that one out) and a teenage boy (who squirmed awkwardly every time he glanced my way and realized what I was doing—sitting by me was the best birth control of his life, guaranteed), with a baby who fought tooth and nail to tear the nursing cover off and nonstop bicycle-kicked the thighs of whichever seatmate she was facing. A true delight, believe you me. And when the nursing no longer satisfied her, Her Highness instead resorted to . . .

6) Testing her lung capacity. Really. The baby who spends 98% of her home life smiling and giggling over nothing and chirping happily spent 98% of the flight bellowing angrily at full volume. And in case anyone’s eardrums weren’t blasted out by her continuous screaming . . .

7) Forrest, 5 rows behind me, provided a blow-by-blow narrative of the action. When Darcy’s wailing died down enough for me to hear anything else, a certain familiar voice from a few rows back called out, “Dat’s my sister, Daw-see, and she saying WAAAH! WAAAAAAH! WAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!! She is vewwy sad and she saying WAAAAAHHHHH!!!!”

I should also mention that people were extremely nice (mostly), and one sweet lady (a stranger to me who must have a heart the size of Texas and a steady IV drip of patience flowing into her veins) offered to give it her best shot and spent a good 30 minutes walking Darcy up and down the aisle (which was the only time on the trip that she stopped crying) (this was also, ironically, the point at which I started crying).

I have never seen a set of passengers more relieved to deboard a plane.