Sweet Victory

You know we made it to Kentucky (and back), but you might not know that I count that flight as one of my greatest accomplishments to date. I will explain. Flying with the boys reminded me of a four hour sacrament meeting at bedtime, as a single mom and without the option of a foyer escape! It certainly wasn't the most pleasant of experiences (to put it mildly), but we survived. The good travel advice from you helped. I had a bag full of tricks and they all worked perfectly on Noah. As for Jake, well, we tried. He fought sleep the whole flight, and he won, which meant I had one tired and wired little boy on my hands for four hours. By the time we made it to Indianapolis I felt like I just finished running a marathon. But the exhaustion made the feeling of victory even sweeter.


What I learned that will help me in future expeditions:

• I can do hard things. (Dale Murphy's family motto)


• Plan for the worst case scenario. Don't expect your baby to do something that he doesn't normally do (fall asleep in your arms, in Jake's case). Chances are, no matter how hard you try, he won't do it when it's in an unfamiliar setting and the pressure is on!


• It is very very nice to have a row of seats all to yourself. Do whatever it takes to make that happen. (Make sure your children are especially fussy while boarding the plane. And try not to be offended when passengers give you THAT look and rush past your row desperate for seating on the other side of the plane. Remember, as long as the flight is not booked to capacity, chances are, no one will choose willingly to sit next to you!)


• Stock up on cheap Dollar Store toys. Toys get lost very easily in transit, so better to lose toys you don't care about and will most likely throw away when you get home anyway. And since they are so cheap, go ahead and get duplicates of each toy for each child. This saves a few fights.


• Invest in a good dry-erase/chalk/magnet board (Melissa and Doug's TJ Maxx 9 bucks) with its alphabet magnets and the sold-separately wooden magnet sets (we got the dinosaurs to fuel Noah's obsession). But don't use all the magnets on a flight (airborne wooden magnets are a scary thing.) It did pass a lot of time on the drive home (at least 6 hours, Thanks Melissa and Doug).


• Use the element of surprise. When they start getting bored, say you have a surprise, let the suspense build for a few minutes, and then break out a new toy, new snack, or new books.

And so, we are home again and on to new endeavors. Aka potty training Noah and weaning Jake. Well now I know we can do hard things, so somehow we'll manage!