Over the River and through the Woods

Last week, we arrived in Ohio for our bi-annual visit to see family and friends and to see new sights.  It was our first attempt at travelling with our tiny tot and although we had hopeful expectations of a stress-free journey, our trip was filled with every horrific toddler-related disaster that an Emmy winning sitcom writer could have ever dreamed up.

After finding our way to the check-in line at the airport, we saw that it was going to be quite the wait because it was at least twenty people deep.  Jackson was coping just fine for the first minute, but after that, we had to distract him with pre-downloaded episodes of his favourite shows on the iPad, fruit snacks, milk, and the "look" game where we point to new things that might catch his attention and say, "Look!"  We were grasping at straws, but we managed to stay calm, reminding ourselves that this too shall pass.

The bags were checked, but we still had to go through the intense rigmarole of security and at this point, Jackson was screaming and flailing about, working himself into a sweaty mess.  As soon as we rounded the corner for the basic, economy security, we were immediately fast-tracked to the priority line because the kind man at the entrance could see the distress we were experiencing.  We bypassed about fifty people or so by going down the special lane that we have only ever looked at from afar before having a baby.

Once through security, we had to find a spot to calm Jackson down and change his diaper.  There was a deserted, quiet corner where we decided to get things rolling.  To distract Jackson, we turned the Minions movie on which inevitably attracted a little girl out of nowhere.  She heard the opening scene  and it called her like a Siren from The Iliad to our mini disaster zone.  And of course, this girl was carrying with her an extra large purple slushie with a very precariously placed flimsy plastic lid.  She knelt down to join in our joyous merriment and in the process, dumped 95% of the icy drink all over our backpack.  I know that things 'can always be worse,' but we were barely an hour into our vacation and I would say that it was a pretty abysmal start.

Jackson settled pretty well onto the plane, but for five of the seven hours, we had a lot of screaming, punching, and kicking on our hands.  We were mostly shocked by his unending energy.  During the intermittent quiet, happy times, Jackson wanted to take laps up and down the aisles; but, since we didn't trust him to stay behind the first class curtain, he had to keep his harness and reins on, so from the other side of the plane, it probably looked like I was walking a dog or pacing at high speed.

The best and worst thing about finally landing was the line for customs.  Jackson somehow still had the energy to continue screaming and thrashing about and this caught the attention of the security guards.  A very tall, intimidating man in a suit approached us and said, "Come with me."  We were then taken up to the customs officer, this time, bypassing hundreds of people.  Thanks, Jackson!

We then had a six-hour layover in Boston which was just as traumatic as the flight, but in the last hour, Jackson was finally able to settle down and fall asleep.  From leaving for our trip to landing in Cleveland, it was a 25-hour journey and we had already felt like we had been on vacation for a week!

So in summation, and looking at the bight side of things, we got to skip ahead in nearly every line, no one bothered us on the plane with meaningless chit-chat because everyone tried their best to act like we didn't exist, and we had so much happen in the first day that we were definitely getting the most out of our days off from work.

Developmental updates:  Jackson turned 22-months-old on Friday.  His new words this week were 'way' (probably because I said, "This way" constantly) and 'turtle.'  Jackson did a full concert for us and sang his favourite nursery rhymes.  He has been doing really well adjusting to his new environment and time zone.  This week, Jackson got to go to a farm safari and got to feed giraffes and zebras!  He wasn't afraid at all of the animals that came up to him and gave him a good sniff before they ate out of his hand.

If you see Sammie Miles Davis, Jr. and Bella, give them my love.