The longest two-and-a-half hours of my life

I have officially been humbled and will no longer be optimistic about air travel with small children. Especially on Southwest Airlines. The kids and I just got back from spending a few days in Las Vegas visiting my parents. S-Boogie and I had spring break this week so I thought it would be fun to get away for a few days somewhere warm. When I sat down to buy the plane tickets that were on sale it turned out that trying to find cheap flights to Vegas was harder than I thought. The biggest problem was that most of the flights were not direct and there is no way in (you know) I'm taking a flight with a layover with small children. So I optimistically booked us on a Tuesday afternoon flight (naptime) and an early Sunday morning flight (butt crack of dawn). Both flights were 15o minutes of pure torture for all of us. First of all, both flights were completely full. So no carseat or extra space for Little Dude. I'm kind of glad he's almost too old to be a "lap child" since that usually means "squirming, cranky, kicking child who smashes an entire bag of Cheez-Its in the tray table and cries for twenty minutes during take-off and landing". Then we had less-than-stellar experiences with the airports, like the security employee this morning who cut in front of me in line and plunked his stuff right in between me and my four-year-old daughter. I didn't dare say anything since I was in a hurry, but I was more than a little annoyed that he seemed to assume a preschooler could fend for herself in line. Or the guy at the gate who asked "can I help you?" and then immediately walked off to help someone else. Sigh. And Southwest fed us Cheez-Its. At seven-thirty in the morning; not exactly my favorite breakfast. No wonder everyone hates air travel so much.

Other than our flights, however, we had a great time at Grandma and Grandpa's house. Lots of pool time, sandbox time, and chasing the poor kitty cat around the house. We discovered that Little Dude loves hummus and chips and that S-Boogie adores ants and spiders (not to eat--just to look at). My mom bought me some cool new sandals and we ate some fabulous Thai food one night. It was a fun, relaxing trip and I'm glad I went; maybe I'll just mail the kids next time.

Comments

Desmama said…
Oh . . . I am so sorry about the flight troubles. Traveling with little children is so hard and so few people really, really understand how much you want things to go well probably more than they do. I think that LD's age is just about the hardest age to be flight-wise, when they're old enough to want to be down and running but not old enough to understand that that's not really an option.
4/06/2008 10:27 PM
Mimsy Buttons said…
And the ear pain for kids is huge - especially during landing. Here's a trick for next time:

Get the flight attendant to bring you two coffee cups (per kid) each with a paper towel folded in the bottom - dampened with just enough boiling water to make steam, but not enough to drip into the kid's ears. Cover ears with the cups.

The steamy air corrects the air pressure problem that causes ear pain. And it gives the kid something to do with their hands... and makes for a neat science lesson for slightly older kids.
4/06/2008 10:59 PM
TJ said…
flying with kids can be horrible. from infant on up. direct flights can be good, but sometimes i wish i had a break after a bit so that they could really run around. most of my flights are two hours up to ten hours. not so fun.
4/07/2008 3:40 PM
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