amazing race

For those of you who don't know, I happen to be obsessed with mindless reality tv. Jordan and I don't watch a lot of tv at home- we don't even have cable- so we watch a few shows on the internet. One of the shows we watch is the Amazing Race, a show where teams of two (friends, couples, family members, etc) follow clues and travel around the world, racing other teams to the finish for one million dollars. Jordan and I always joke that there's no way we could do this show together because I'd probably scream at him the whole time... I'm a horrible traveler- especially in airports. I just sort of panic if I'm running late. So, when I thought about taking Marshall on an airplane ride to Seattle to visit Grandma and Grandpa, I was worried.

Jordan dropped us off at the Kansas City airport yesterday morning- I could tell he was sad to see us go. We checked in at the ticket counter and checked our one bag. Then, we stopped off at the bathroom for a diaper change (featuring diarrhea, thanks to the Rotarix vaccine, which he received the day before). We went through security, which went quite smoothly- probably because I had called the airport the day before to figure out how they would want me to travel with Marshall's formula. Once through the security checkpoint, we found our gate and settled down to wait to board. We had arrived pretty early, with about an hour and a half before our scheduled departure to Denver (yes, we were making a connection in Denver en route to Seattle... i.e. potential nightmare). As we were sitting, waiting, Marshall kept looking over my shoulder. Usually he does this when someone is making cute faces at him, but every time I turned around, there wasn't anyone behind us. He kept looking over there, and laughing, but every time I looked, there wasn't anything. Puzzled, I just figured he was being silly Marshall. Then, he started squirming and looking over my shoulder, so I stood up, and looked where he was looking. He was staring at the podium at the gate next to ours. I looked on the sign, and it said, "Seattle-Tacoma, 9:25am." I looked back to the sign above our gate, which said, "Denver, 10:07am," and looked at Marshall. He was laughing. That smart little guy had found us a direct flight! I quickly gathered our things and walked over to the ticket counter at the other gate and asked the attendant if we could fly standby on that flight to Seattle. She explained to me that the Denver flight was actually overbooked and that they were just about to ask people to give up their seats and take a later flight, so she was more than happy to switch us to another flight. She made the change, walkie-talkied someone to have our bag moved from the first plane to the second, and then gave us our new boarding passes. Score!! It wasn't until after I sent my parents and Jordan a text message notifying them of this amazing change that I realized that I hadn't even checked to make sure that the flight was with the same airline! Ha! So, if we had been on the Amazing Race, Marshall and I would have sneakily beat all the other teams, by about 3 hours!!!

Marshall decided to have another episode of diarrhea while we were waiting to board, so we ran to the bathroom quick and then boarded the plane with all the other parents with children and elderly passengers with walkers and wheelchairs. We found our seat (in the back, window seat) and settled down. As everyone else started boarding, Marshall freaked out and started crying, fighting sleep. He pooped his pants again (awesome!), but we were about to leave the terminal, so I knew I'd have to wait to take him to the bathroom. And, in all honesty, I was sort of dreading figuring out how to change his diaper in the tiny airplane bathroom. I had intended to give him a bottle during take-off so his ears would pop, but he fell asleep while we were taxiing around. He slept all through take-off, and for the next two hours of our flight. I even took a nap, too. He woke up, and was happy. I tried to nudge the gal seated next to us, so I could go change his diaper, but she had her headphones on and apparently was either in a super deep sleep or was ignoring us because she wouldn't wake up to let us out to go to the bathroom. So, Marshall and I just hung out. He started to get kind of squirmy, so I decided to pull out the portable DVD player to pop in Baby Einstein. I put in the DVD and went to turn the player on, when I realized it had been turned on the whole morning while in my bag, and now the battery was dead. Awesome. Marshall looked at me, like, "Mom, why isn't the movie on??" I packed everything back up and tried to entertain Marshall by opening up the window shade so he could see outside. As soon as I did, his eyes opened up wide and he puked all over us. Yucky. At this point, the girl seated next to us got up to use the bathroom, so we also got up and moved to the back of the plane. Surprisingly, the pull-out baby changing table was great- I just put down our mat and laid him on it. He giggled throughout the whole disgusting diaper change. When we went to go back to our seat, the flight attendants were serving a second round of beverages and the cart was blocking our access to our seat, so we just hung out in the back of the plane and stood up for a while. A dad decided to join us with his 2 year old, and Marshall and this little boy proceeded to laugh at one another for the next 5-10 minutes. Once we got back to our seat, I decided to give Marshall a bottle. I took off the cap, and apparently the pressure had built up inside because formula started squirting EVERYWHERE, like a fountain. Marshall thought it was both hilarious, and frustrating, since he wasn't eating. He kept moving his mouth, trying to catch some of the milk. It was so comical. After his bottle, Marshall took another nap, and I enjoyed some diet coke and freshly baked chocolate chip cookies (thanks, Midwest Airlines!!!!). He slept through the landing!

Marshall was so excited to see Grandpa at the airport! He was a great passenger on the drive to their house, and played well with everyone the rest of the day.

All in all, he was a great traveler, and I'd definitely fly with him again... which is good, considering we do have to go home eventually. :) I will say that a direct flight is a MUST- I probably didn't have enough sanity to deal with take-off and landing twice. And, I'll make sure the DVD player is charged next time.