Wow. What an experience.
We were taking the red-eye out to Houston to visit my parents. My sister was flying in to meet me at the airport to fly back with me (WONDERFUL sis!!). Josh and I waited patiently in the airport for her flight to get in. The twins decided it was a big party and stayed wide awake (at times PISSED). While Josh & I were waiting we smell that familiar unpleasant smell of poop. I looked at Riley, who looked uncomfortably back at me. I open her sleeper and she had exploded. All over. she had it completely up and down her chest, her back, even in her hair. How does a baby do this?? So I take her to the bathroom with me, give her an "airport bath", even wash her hair. Dylan was a good boy and only had a wet diaper. Thank you boy!
Cat finally gets there and we hustle to the gate to board. Oh, forgot to mention I did not check any bags ($25 per??? don't think so!). So we each had a suitcase, diaper bag, and a personal item. And a baby. And they were all extremely heavy. I didn't think to bring a stroller for Josh to just take home BTW. DUH. So struggling with angry wiggling babies. 50 lbs of luggage each, we were obviously losing our grip on it all (not the babies though!) It took us what seemed like an eternity to get to the gate.
Oh. It doesn't end there.
We board the plane and take our seats.
"I'm sorry, but you both can't sit there."
"Excuse me?"
"Well, each row is only equipped with one extra oxygen mask so you can't sit together since you each have a baby." (while rolling eyes that we have babies).
"Um, ok."
Cat switches to the next aisle seat and I sit in the other aisle seat. At least we can talk over the aisle, right? Wrong. BIG wrong.
Family of 3 come in.
MAN - "THAT'S MY SEAT."
Cat - "The stewardess told me to sit here."
Man gets mad. "WHY?!?!"
ME - "Something about oxygen masks. Let's just wait for her to come back."
Attendant comes back and tells the dude he will have to sit in the next aisle seat (MY SEAT). He argues and throws a fit, Attendant says to deal with it in not so many words and tells me to scoot over.
By the way. The seats we have are right behind the wing emergency exit so they don't recline for some reason. And I have a 6'5" dude sitting next to me on the other side. So it's angry man, me and Riley, and super-tall-dude.
So you can imagine comfort is at an all time low. I literally have the worst seat on the plane. With a baby.
An angry, tired, HOT baby. It was hot and dry on that plane.
Cat had the second worst seat. Again another angry, tired, and HOT baby. Who wants his mommy. He couldn't understand why I wasn't holding him. So he cried. And cried.
Riley was worried about him and kept eyeing him and Cat (she didn't know who she was). And wailed.
Riley and Dylan have adopted new cries by the way. They are screams.
They both screamed for about 20 minutes into the flight, refused their bottles and anything else we tried. Riley finally took my glasses off my face and chewed on them for a while. I told (yelled to) Cat the Dylan likes his feet rubbed and legs played with. She did that and he was out within seconds.
As the babies slept I stayed awake. Upright. I dozed off for a few minutes at a time but felt myself releasing my grip and woke back up. Our carriers were inaccessible and I had no arm movement to put it on anyway. The angry man scowled at me and Cat through the whole trip. The wife of the man kept crowding the armrest. The man kept doing the same to me. The super-tall-dude just tolerated it with a slight smile as I apologized to him whenever Riley kicked him or tried to take his book. That was the ONLY thing I apologized for. I don't think I need to apologize if my baby is uncomfortable and there's not a damn thing I can do about it.
She woke up a few times wailing and went back to sleep. We were finally descending and they both woke up for good. And screamed. Again refused EVERYTHING.
But then we got off the plane and here's the kicker - most of the back half was EMPTY. Which means that stupid stewardess could have asked us to move back there. No problem I would have done it in a second.
To top it off, this whole FIASCO could have been better had the CONTINENTAL Air rep mentioned something when I made the reservations. Because they knew we each had an infant on our laps.
Now I know.
