Before Kids
I used to travel for work all the time, so I had a pretty good mental packing list when it came to personal trips. DF and I would wait till the night before or morning of our trip to throw some stuff in our carry-on bags, call a taxi, and arrive at the airport no more than 90 minutes before our flight. On the plane, we'd play on our phones, watch movies if provided, read books, nap, eat snacks, and generally relax. Upon arrival at our destination, we'd either use public transportation or pick up our rental car and head off for adventures. Maybe we'd be a little tired if we had to get up early for the flight, but we caught up on sleep within a day or two of being footloose and fancy free.
With Kids
I started fretting about flying with the babies before we even bought tickets for this trip. About 3 months before departure, I created an overly-detailed Google spreadsheet for everything we could possibly need (including items to pack, buy in advance and ship, and borrow or buy in Oregon), which probably resulted in stressing my parents out as I convinced them to drive all over the Willamette Valley borrowing baby goods.
A week before we were scheduled to leave, both babies (of course) came down with colds. They kept waking up at night and needing me to snuff out their noses. Then one night, A screamed for quite awhile, so I took them both to the doctor in the morning to discover A had an ear infection. B's ears looked fine, but he was still grouchy. When travel day arrived, then, both DF and I were already exhausted from a week of sleep deprivation and cranky, sick, teething babies.
We managed to fit our copious amounts of gear into 3 checked bags and 3 carry-ons, plus our two infant carrier car seats. We almost forgot the snap-n-go folding stroller, but luckily the taxi had only driven about a mile away from our house when I remembered it! We arrived at the airport two hours early and had to wait in line to check our bags. I don't recall the last time I had checked luggage!!
Going through security was rather chaotic. There were no TSA personnel on the "load your stuff" side of the screening zone to tell us what to do with our carseats and stroller, so we just sort of stood there looking confused until someone finally pointed us in the right direction. Once through security, we had to buy some bottled water so we could make the babies' bottles while traveling. We also attempted to feed ourselves, semi-successfully. I didn't really want the boys to crawl around the waiting area eating all the crumbs and dirt they found on the floor, but that meant we each had to hold one, and they weren't super happy about being constrained.
We didn't purchase seats on the plane for the babies (so expensive!) but got lucky on leg #1 of travel (Memphis-Houston) that there were unoccupied seats, so we got to bring their carseats on the plane. Yay, babies napping in flight! We weren't so fortunate on leg #2, the four-hour jaunt. Four hours of holding a squirming baby who refuses to nap. Yeah, that's about as fun as it sounds. I think they were too distracted by all the people who wanted to stop and talk to/make faces at them. I mean, it was nice that the other passengers were being friendly, but they wound the kids up too much to sleep! I just kept shoving Cheerios in the boys' mouths. It was extra tricky because the four of us couldn't all sit in the same row - there is only one extra oxygen mask per 3-seat row, so only one lap baby is allowed. We wound up sitting across the aisle from each other. We survived (barely).
Upon arrival at PDX, we found out that Southwest had lost our luggage. I don't know how they managed to do that because we were on the same plane all the way from Memphis! Apparently someone took our bags off the plane when they shouldn't have. Argh! And then there were a series of car accidents causing big delays on the highway, so a usually 1.25 hour drive took nearly 2.5 hours. We were all cranky and exhausted by the time we got to Grandma and Grandpa's house. Well, maybe not DF because he has the mental fortitude to decide not to be cranky, but the other 3 of us aren't as capable of controlling our emotions :)
Where is our luggage??
Predictably, I had packed the babies' white noise sound machine and sleep sacks in one of the lost suitcases. So, we all had another long and sleepless night as they had none of their usual sleeping comforts, besides pacifiers. The luggage was delivered to my parents house early the next morning. Hooray, things are looking up!
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