Traveling

I know your saying how can things be stressful when you travel with 3 of the most well behaved beautiful talented children you've ever known. Well they don't look stressful here, this is the quiet before the storm, the real deal comes a few hours into the experience.

Really I must make a note of how travel has changed since I was a young traveler. My mom and I would get pretty gussied up to go on an airplane, maybe not our finest wear but there was a whole lot more thought than "what's the most comfortable" put into it. These kid were hard pressed to wear clean clothes, I really had to convince Little Mama that it wasn't ok to wear what she had worn the entire day before !!!

So this is what we ended up with, and I love it !!!

The Rhino used to cause a little havoc on the plane but nothing really worth noting. Now he will spend the first 30 minutes staring out the window and obsessively reading the in flight procedure guide before he finally realizes that he was supposed to ask me to put on his in flight video. Not much trouble at all and yet still so handsome.

Little Mama is happy to spend the next 2 hours playing tic tac toe with her dad or the bubble game on her dads phone, either of which I think is a great use of this time.

And this looks pleasant enough but don't let looks fool you. This is trouble with a capital T just waiting to get started. He quietly lulls the neighboring passengers into thinking this might be a pleasant trip only to wait until we are all most definitely trapped before letting loose.

This is the first thing that Little Man goes for. The most obvious signal to everyone that I can't control my child. Usually by the time he has hit this I have prepared myself for public humiliation over the loud speaker. Then that familiar voice comes on to please remind everyone that the call button is only for those times when you really need something. I wanted to tell her that I really did need something, a lobotomy, and we hadn't even taken off yet. Little did she know that I was so familiar with this type of public humiliation that last time I was informed that those weren't toys and could I please stop him from pushing them. It doesn't bother me anymore.

This one causes ne a little more serious grief since it's for his own safety. It's hard to convince a 2 yr old who now has control over his own safety belt to leave it buckled. I just pray really hard that their isn't ever any unexpected turbulence, and of course I try to make him keep it on.

Oh my heavens this is so much fun it's painful. No really when he whacks himself in the head with it it is painful for him. God love him and the people who sit in the seat in front of him. I try to apologies to the people in front of us before we even sit down, but when there are body parts flying all over it's hard to keep the seat from getting jostled or body slammed, whichever you prefer. He loves to open and close this using his entire upper torso, it's great for his hand eye coordination. That could be what I tell the people in front, they could actually be contributing to the successful training of the next Ty Cobb or Earl Campbell.

This is the one that scares me to death. Luckily they won't let us get even remotely close because if they did it would be terrifying. Although this trip we did sit only one row behind the exit and while it made The Rhino happy to know we were SOOOO close to safety if we needed it it still made me nervous.

Here is the second savior for me, Jesus being my first, the movie CARS comes second. It can absorb him, suck him in, swallow him so wholly that I can't even, not even for chocolate, get his attention. CARS IS THE BEST.

I say that because CARS at naptime on the plane does this.

And really this is a good way to travel ;)