Travel Day

Subtitle: In Which Zeke Obtains A Seat For Himself

Travel days. Not everyone’s most favorite part of travel, but a necessary evil. I happen to be one of those weirdos who still thinks air travel has that special shimmer to it, as if we’re still back in the golden age of flight. Plane food? Delish! Cramped bathroom? How long do I really need anyway! Stuck next to a surly passenger for the next six hours? Hey, it’s only six hours! Basically I’m still amazed by the idea of a steel tube safely transporting hundreds of people anywhere on the planet. What can I say #simpleton.

A travel day with a baby is, however, something I am rather anxious about. As my previous post (ahem…from January…you remember, right?) mentioned MandyandAdam had a baby last year. We have taken our little guy lots of places that have required flights over the past year. In fact, at the beginning, we smugly stated how easy flights were. He just falls asleep! So cute!

Then little guy gets a bit bigger. And more mobile. And more teething-y. Not to mention this kid has an olympic set of lungs. Being born at altitude in Denver most babies have slightly lower oxygen saturation readings — Zeke’s pediatrician just wrote it down as 99% when she kept getting a 100% reading on him during a sick visit.

Kid can yell.

Naturally we were a little nervous about the prospect of a 6+ hour travel day…but our wanderlust was not to be quelled by the mere mortal powers of a baby! Fast forward to six weeks ago when we booked a vacation to Hawaii – the state of my birth – and we mentally prepared for toughing out a flight en route to paradise.

Kids under 2 travel free with the condition that their “seat” is on the lap of an adult. Sometimes we get lucky and there is an open third seat in our row and we can bring on Zeke’s carseat for free (meaning he has his very own seat). Those are the easier flights hands down.

The flight from San Francisco to Hawaii was full. Who would have thought lots of people would be flying to Hawaii on a Thursday in the middle of summer. So we boarded ready to grit our teeth and make it through his blood curdling screams.

Did I mention Zeke was teething and had recently sprung a fever? Yea.

So here we are. Zeke is actually enjoying himself when he hits a sprouting tooth wrong with his snack – cue extremely unhappy and highly vocal child.

Our window seat neighbor had been “sleeping” quite aggressively from the moment we boarded. No one can sleep through this baby’s screams, and homeboy was no exception. We’re doing what we can to calm down baby who had been crying for about five minutes at this point, when the flight attendant appears at our seats. Homeboy then asks “are there ANY other seats?”. I’m sure I turned about five shades of red – homeboy doesn’t respond when Adam tries to good naturedly apologize and explain why Z was so upset.

Flight attendant returns to inform our neighbor that there is a single middle seat left several rows back (we were in the extra leggy bulkhead seats). And. He. Takes. It.

Part of me wants to be mad at him as he huffily grabs his things and scoots by us without a word. A part of me understands. And Adam logically points out our luck that we now have a third seat all to ourselves.

About a minute later Zeke stops crying.

Well played my son, well played.