Okay, now don't get me wrong, I love my kids more than anything, but have you ever noticed that when you travel with those wonderful little ones, everything seems to go wrong? Well let me tell you, I have done quite a bit of traveling with my kids and I know now that unless you have an extremely high patience level, you should never fly alone with a child under the age of 5.
I flew with my son when he was only 6 months old. I was a new mom and was flying to meet my husband in Hawaii. We were flying from California, so it was a straight flight, no layovers. Piece of cake right? Yea and if you buy that I have a bridge to sell you. Well I thought it would be easy. Sure, ten minutes after take off, he threw up all over our seat and me. I was sitting on the aisle, but of course there was no stewardess to be found (why do they have those call buttons anyway? No one comes when you truly need them). The woman next to me jumped so high that she literally hit her head on the ceiling of the airplane, and was crawling into the lap of the gentleman next to her (who was not flying with her). I was beside myself. My baby is crying hysterically, I am covered in puke, and no one would give me a hand!
Finally, a stewardess shows up to tell me "Ma'am, please go the restroom and clean up, the smell is bothering the other passengers". Oh, and I was enjoying it, right? She honestly thought that I wanted to just sit there like that for the rest of the flight!
Okay, so stupid new mom that I was, I didn't bring a change of clothes for myself. Well I had a zippered sweatshirt, so I went into the bathroom with the baby, laid him on the floor on a blanket, and undressed standing on top of the toilet, on foot on each side of the toilet seat since there was no toilet lid. Of course the baby found this quite amusing. I washed up as best as I could, and changed the baby's clothes. As I walked out of the bathroom, there was that wonderful stewardess again. "Ma'am, please hurry along, you are holding up the line." Good grief! I was ready to push her off the plane! Obviously, this was a woman who had no children in her life. Then it dawned on me, a year ago, I might have responded the same way, so I gave her a weak smile and walked back to my seat.
The rest of the flight went fairly smoothly, since the baby slept for the next 3 hours. Until the plane started to descend. Then there he went again. Threw up everywhere! Boy, was I mad this time. Now what was I gonna do! I had no other clothes to put on, should I just go in the bathroom, and strip naked so I don't bother the other passengers with the smell?
Well, I just sat there all gross and smelly, and smiled prettily to the snarling woman in the seat next to us, and as I departed the plane, the stewardess was telling everyone "Thank you for flying on American Airlines, please fly with us again." Then she saw us, and you know what? She didn't say a word. She just looked right past us with that big fake smile, so you know what I did? I took the blanket that the baby had thrown up on (which happened to be one of the airlines blankets) and put it into her hand and said "Thank you for your Wonderful Service, I hope you get treated the same way some day." I walked away. I will never forget the look on her face when I put that blanket in her hand, she honestly looked like she would faint. And if she had, I probably would have put the blanket under her head so she could see what it was like to find yourself laying on something soft and slimy.......
