Figuring out Travel

Our first trip with Owen was big. Three hour drive from Mammoth to Reno. Spend the night in a hotel. Shuttle to Reno airport. Three hour and forty-five minute flight to Chicago. Change planes. One hour and fifteen minute flight to Cleveland. Twenty minute drive to parents house. Six days with parents and brother. Six hour drive to Indianapolis. Five days in Indy. Six hour drive back to Cleveland. Five a.m. Trip to Cleveland airport. Four hour flight to Vegas. Change planes. One hour and twenty minute flight to Reno. Three hour drive to Mammoth. All completed with a 10 week old kiddo who hates sleeping.

We’re exhausted.

But it was good to visit our families and it’s good to be back in the Sierra. You apparently can’t enjoy the perks of remote ski-town living without some serious travel when it comes time to visit the fam. What did we learn from all of this? Well, here’s a run down.

1. Driving with a baby is like Speed without Keanu Reeves to save the day. You can’t slow down. Or stop. They will wake up.
2. Pack light and bring extra bags. Babies are popular critters. People like to buy them stuff. Packing an empty bag for said stuff on the return trip was clutch.
3. Owen is a morning traveller. At least for this trip. 5:00 pm and on pretty much suck for him. He screams a lot.
4. Carry-on luggage beyond snacks and a diaper bag is a pain in the ass. Babies require enough paraphernalia. Check your own stuff. You can buy new undies when you get there if your luggage is lost. You really just need diapers, wipes, and like 10 outfits for the niño.
5. Always travel with lots of extra baby clothes. Inevitably, here’s what happens: you dress them in an adorable outfit. You feed them. You burp them. You think you’re good to go, since the burp that came out of your child was akin to something you’ve only heard from grown men who have downed like two liters of Coke in less than ten minutes. You get the munchkin all strapped in the car seat and start driving. Three minutes later, he projectile vomits all over your adorable outfit for which you also packed a matching hat that will now look just like a random hat with turtles on it because he won’t be wearing that outfit anymore. Then later that morning, poo will inevitably and inexplicably sneak out of the diaper onto the sleeper you put him in following the vomit incident because you were too lazy to find socks. Of course this happens while you’re trapped in your 22 inches of personal airline space due to “unexpected bumps”. Once the captain turns off the fasten seatbelt sign and you are free to move about the cabin, you do your damnedest not to get the poo on anything as you head to the “changing room” in the front of the 737. You maneuver the child into his third outfit of the day. He smiles a toothless grin and spits curdled breast milk on you and the new monkey sleeper. Damned monkey sleeper. At this point you just get out the burp cloth and wipe it down because you can’t fathom changing him again on an airplane, in an airport, in a car, or anywhere else, really, that isn’t an appropriate height and sanitary situation. So never mind the ten outfits. Just bring burp cloths and bibs. Lots of them.
6. Get a seat for your infant. You may only put his paraphernalia in it, but it keeps you from having some stranger sitting next to you and your infant as you try to nurse him and keep him from getting TB.
7. Bring hand sanitizer. The nutter flight attendant will apparently feel it is totally appropriate to reach into your seat and touch your infant’s hands whilst collecting trash from the cabin. I’m making that up, right? Surely no one is that uncouth. Bring hand sanitizer. Use it liberally on you and your baby who has recently discovered that eating his hand is rad and that he can almost fit the whole fist in his mouth.
8. Try to live closer to an airport than we do.

But it was all worth it. It’s a shame we can’t all live close to our families, but you sure appreciate the time you have with them when this is your journey to get there and back. It’s hard to beat the joy of watching your kiddo smile at his grandparents and aunts and uncles for the first time. Except when he finally falls asleep in the car on the way home, maybe. 🙂