Flight from Hell

My husband and I have traveled a bit with our children.  In fact, after our 4 year old son no longer qualified to be a "lap child" (at the age of two), we signed him up for the Southwest Frequent Flyer program and he is now close to earning his first free round trip ticket!  Our 15 month old daughter has flown a handful of times to date. 

Most of the flights with the chitlins have been on have been just under or just a little over one hour to and from Washington D.C. and Cape Cod area.  Generally when people see them on the airplane they comment on how cute they are (but of course they are!) and how well behave they are. "They didn't cry one bit." "What good little travel companions you have." "They were so quite, i didn't realize you had children with you!" 

Once on the way to Providence, RI, a man on a flight asked Gage to hold out his hand and shoved $50 bucks in it and insisted that he take me out to dinner for doing such a good job with our son.  (Actually, this kinda freaked me out at first. I thought the man must be some sort of weirdo and insisted that Gage return the money, but when he went to return the money he could not find the man on the plane or after we exited  the plane.)

This kind of feedback sort of went to my head. So whenever i heard a screaming child on the plane, i sympathized with the parents and the little one.  My heart went out to them. I sometimes came close to tears myself!  In the back of my mind, however, i think i always thought that there was something else that the parent could have done and wasn't doing to comfort the baby (e.g. give the baby a bottle or a pacifier, sing to them, hold them differently, change the diaper, etc...). You see, these were the things i did to comfort my non-screaming child on the plane and they seemed to work...at least they did until yesterday! 

The three hour flight back from Texas yesterday started during nap time; however, the chitlins did not sleep on the plane.  In fact, the sleep deprivation combined with our daughter's head cold resulted in an inconsolable, non-stop, screaming-at-the-top-of-her-lungs 15  month old lap child for what seemed an eternity on the plane. Okay so "the eternity" may have only lasted for about 10 minutes, but when the child is literally screaming at the top of her lungs! and you know the whole plane is listening!! and wondering-- like i use to -- "what aren't they doing to console the child"...it seems like "forever"! 

Despite our best efforts -- to give her a bottle (no, no, no she said as she waved her arms this and that away), to give her the "bibi" (aka: pacifier. she spit it out, followed by more no, no), to sing to her (she wasn't feeling the ba ba black sheep), to reposition her (she only arched her back more), and shhhing her (she couldn't hear us over her screams), she only screamed more louder...to eleven! 

It wasn't until Gage said the magic words "koo koo" -- our daughter's word for cookie -- that she finally stopped screaming...and then only long enough for him to put another one in her mouth.  She chomped down on it immediately and just as she was about to open her mouth and scream again he said the magic words and gave her another one. He repeated this about 20 times before she finally calmed herself down and stopped crying.  Thank god. Otherwise i would have gone cuckoo!