Tuesday, October 18, 2011

The Godfather (Part I)

This weekend, we went back to Ohio for Alex's baptism.  Although we have a church we (well mostly I) attend in CT, all of our families live in Ohio, and we just got our new rector at St. Mark's three weeks ago (as in, we didn't have anyone who could baptize Alex when we bought our plane tickets).  So Southwest was having a sale over the summer, we bought three tickets and picked a date.
So we had to get the baby, and all his stuff, on a plane.  We of course, left later than we planned.  As we were on the freeway, I realized that I had forgotten my cell phone (nooooooooo!).  I use Dan's phone to call my phone, no ringing from inside the car (sob!).  It's too late to turn around, we're already running late.  I accept my cellphoneless existance for the weekend.  Dan drops me, Alex and all of our stuff off at the door, then went to park the car.  I lug our stuff inside and collapse in a heap (baby stuff is heavy!).  And then I hear my cellphone (Joy!).  I manage to hang up on my mom attempting to find my phone in my backpack.  I call Dan and tell him where I am.  Then several minutes later, I remember - the carseat base.  I call him, no answer.  I text him, no answer.  Dan shows up a minute later, no car seat base. Damn. 

We lug our stuff over to the Southwest counter, get our bags checked and all that, and ask about the carseat base.  They do recommend using the base on the plane.  Double Damn.

We head over to security, and are directed into the family/medical line.  Dan decides to run back to the car to get the car seat base, I wait in line.  And wait and wait and wait and move approximately 4 feet.  After about 10 minutes,  I see a man with a car seat base looking at the front of the line - that would be my husband.  I shout his name to get his attention, he comes over, after asking permission from the TSA, and gets in line with me.

At this point I'm starting to feel less favorable towards the "nice" person who directed us to the family/medical line.  I don't think that was meant to be helpful to us.  I think they try to stick all the slow people into one line to let everyone else go faster. 

We're starting to get antsy - we're past the time they should have been boarding our flight, and we're still stuck in security.  We start to get worried about missing our flight.  We finally get through security, which wasn't actually that much of an ordeal for us.  They let me carry Alex through the regular metal detector, although Dan had to use the backscatter X-ray thing.  We speed walk to our gate, and get there exactly 2 minutes after our plane's scheduled departure, and they've already closed the doors.  We missed our flight.  Triple Damn!

Luckily, Southwest is awesome, and they totally got us on the next flight out.  We had time to get some food (sweet potato fries FTW), feed the baby, go to the bathroom, etc.  It's finally time for our new flight, we get to board during family boarding and we need to get the car seat set up.  Turns out there's not quite enough room for the car seat without pushing up on the seat in front of it.  Unfortunately, there was a person in that seat, a person who kept responding by pushing back.  Not helpful guy.  We finally get the seat in.  I am pointedly instructed to put on my own oxygen mask first, before the baby's.  And then we leave.  Alex, at this point, had taken 0 naps.  It was 3:00pm.  At this point during the day he should have had 2-3 naps.  0 naps.  So my flight was spent attempting to amuse a very tired and cranky baby who did not like all of the ear popping and pressure changes, thank you very much. 

We had enough time at our layover to use the bathroom and change Alex's diaper, and then back on the plane.  I made Dan sit next to Alex so he could deal with Mr. Fussy Pants this time.  Alex was totally fine on that flight and slept for most of it (of course).

We made it safely to Columbus, which is where we'll pick up next time.  Class dismissed :)

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