snakes on a plane

Simon and I were totally those snakey parents on the plane last night hogging an entire aisle with the baby in the middle seat, dodging looks from boarding passengers, and really hoping that the repeated, "this flight is almost full, folks!" warnings from the flight attendant meant that there were at least a couple of seats to spare. In our pathetic defense, there was only one other child (looked to be not a day younger than 10 but .... my speciality is the 3 and under crowd so maybe he was a healthy five year old ... on steroids) that joined us with his parents for family boarding and ... um .... the defense rests right there. All we got.

But!!

Here's the thing. There's always a thing with kids and parenthood and kids. Always.

Theo could sense that the trip had gone too smoothly. Titan had only delayed our flight by 10 minutes (after the local news told me 1000 times that over 1000 flights departing from DC had been canceled), security was relatively pleasant, and there had been enough time to get some food (back when Simon and I were dating we took a trip to New Mexico to visit my family ... I went to get breakfast at the airport before our flight took off and Simon refused to budge from the gate lest he miss the flight .... with or without me).

Too smoothly.

No sooner had we taken off and I was fumbling with my phone trying to get a grainy shot of the Capitol (the life of a blogger ... it is fast freaking paced) when Simon frantically tapped my arm and gave me the, "wtf wtf wtf wtf" look as I turned to see both he and Theo covered in .......

WHAT IS ......

NO.

NOT THAT.

no, please no.

no no no no no no no no no. 

But YES.

It was precisely that .... toddler vomit of the projectile variety

that just kept coming

and coming

and coming.

Later Simon would say, "he puked himself a pair of overalls" and Grace would say that was an understatement because he puked himself a straight trough of vom to frolic in ... Wilbur style.

You can only try to imagine the smell that accompanied that excitement and the volume of Theo's cries as we peeeeeeeeeeeeeled off his clothing and tried to spare anything that could be spared (nothing - even my diaper bag fell victim) while we threw a million baby wipes at the situation, and sheepishly asked for two trash bags ... one for all of the soiled clothes that were appropriate to remove from our persons and one for the now two million baby wipes that were lost to the cause.

Of course Theo popped right back into happy mode when he was clad in just his diaper and vom crusted hair while I kept making the fatal mistake of switching from mouth to nose breathing while dodging his new trick to give wide open mouth kisses (overandoverandoverandstopplease) and eventually just had to laugh because what else can you do?

It could've been so much worse.

We could've had the other two kids with us, it could've been a really bad "other end" blow out, I could've been flying solo with Theo (and to be honest it would've been very tempting to stop, drop, and roll right off the flight into the night if I had been fighting that losing battle all by myself ... too morbid for a family blog? fine!), we could've been on some trillion hour flight overseas (I mean ... let's be real but ... still), and I could've not had the foresight to throw an extra pair of pants in my accessible bag for the vom monster.

His zipped up jacket doubled as a shirt and he eventually accepted my shoulder as a mediocre blankie substitute and passed out. Or ptfo as some like to say.

But during the, "eventually" portion of the flight while he was thrashing and wafting his scent every which way when the pilot's voice came booming over the loudspeaker ...

what mama bear actually heard was ...

Really.

But we made it and it only took us SO long to deplane that a mere five passengers had already been allowed to board for the next flight (and each and every one of them took a nice look at my formerly blue .. now patterned and colorful maternity jeans and breathed an audible sigh of relief that we were getting off off off the flight) and we made it home. Theo did have one more episode at 10:30 juuuuuuuuuust as Simon and I were drifting off to sleep so we had to have the ...

Simon: (half-heartedly) oh, I don't mind bathing him
Grace: (quarter-heartedly) oh, no. it's fine. you have to go to work tomorrow ... I'll bathe him
Simon: (happily) well ... I'll get a clean towel ready at least
Grace: (1/8-heartedly) okay, thanks.

conversation.

You KNOW you know the one. And no one is ever keeping score around here and it all comes out in the wash and evens out in the end (and even if it didn't ... that's not the name of the marriage game ... I know, I know) and Simon does always have to get up so much earlier than this lazy bones.

So.

Snakes on a plane.
Don't hate them too hard.
They just might have your best clean-clothed/vomless lap interest at heart. 
You never know.


oh! And Theo is fine today. I think he went a little overboard with his Fat Tuesday confection intake and/or he has no tolerance for turbulence.

Baby.

;)