So this past weekend I shocked my sister M and her fiance C by showing up on their doorstep in Colorado. Surprise! My youngest sister A threw them a joint wedding shower on Saturday (what they call a “jack and jill party”), so I wanted to be there for the festivities. As such, I bid R and sweet baby D a fond farewell, hopped on a plane Friday night, spent a great weekend with my sisters and their significant others out west, and flew back Sunday afternoon. Unfortunately I didn’t take a camera, so I’ll have to get M to send me some of the pictures she took at the par-tay. We are a cute trio of sisters.
Anyhoo… I learned that since becoming a mom, children on planes don’t really bother me anymore. Big deal, SM, that’s boring, who cares? No, really – being confined in a flying metal pencil with children, plural, does not make me want to huff and pout and glare anymore. Because I totally used to be one of those people who saw a baby on a plane and instantly wanted to turn around and de-board. For how was I possibly going to endure an entire flight with a screaming, annoying kid? I wasn’t going to be able to sleep, or read, or anything. I was going to have to listen to the inconsolable obnoxiousness and hope I didn’t strain my eyeballs from rolling them so hard the whole time. Har.
So you can imagine my attitudinal surprise when, on my flight out Friday night, I was surrounded by 6 children in the rows immediately in front of and behind me, and I actually found them enjoyable. Gasp! I know, crazy, right? (i just realized i’m using a lot of italics in this post, but trust me, the emphasis is warranted) There was an adorable 1 year old boy right behind me who was having a great time smiling at and generally entertaining the passengers near him. I chatted with his parents a bit since that was his first flight, D’s first flight is coming up in a few weeks on the exact same route as that one on which we were flying, and this boy was behaving wonderfully. There were 2 kids directly in front of me, maybe 10 and 7, somewhere around there. Then there were 3 boys 2 rows behind me and across the aisle, ages I would guess of 5, 3, and a newborn. That whole family of 5 sat together in the 3 seats on that side, so it was a full house back there. The baby cried a couple times, no big deal. What I did find odd, though, was upon our descent into Denver, the oldest of the 3 boys started screaming wildly, “I’m falling! I’m falling!” I thought hmm, that’s a little strange, for the parents weren’t really doing a whole lot to comfort or quiet him. The middle boy even said, “Mason, it’s ok, you’re not falling.” So although I found it weird, it didn’t cause me to want to aim spit wads at the kid like it would have a year ago.
There was a girl sitting in the middle seat of the row in front of that family, who I did see turn around and give a tongue click and a side-eye at one point, but I think one of the boys was repeatedly kicking her chair. Ok, that’s a little different. And the mom did apologize, saying her husband was trying to find the boy’s pacifier to calm him down. She (the tongue-clicker) seemed fine from that point on after the apology. I still couldn’t help but think, oh honey, just you wait until you have little ones of your own. It’s soo different.
This one did make me give a mom a second look, though. On my flight home Sunday, I was seated in the midst of another family of 5. Mom and the 2 older kids, a girl maybe 12ish and a boy maybe 8ish, were seated across the aisle from me, and Dad and the youngest kid, a boy maybe 4ish, were seated center and window on my side. This was all fine, but at one point the girl dropped the portable dvd player, and the mom goes, “Oh way to go, Einstein!” Whaaat? Was that really necessary? Now if she’d said it as a big joke and they all started laughing, like that was a family catch phrase or something, that’d be one thing. But she was serious. Like ugh, why are you so stupid? The girl looked kind of degraded after the comment, and I thought man, that was a little harsh. The dvd player wasn’t broken, this was no major disaster. Did you really need to make your daughter feel like an idiot? I don’t know – I just seem to view everyday things so differently now, since I always relate them to D and how I’d feel or what I’d do if she were involved. And hopefully I wouldn’t see the need to make her feel like junk over something so trivial. Or ever.
But back to the flight out, I was trying to take note of the parents behind me on that one, to see how they were occupying their little guy. He gave a couple little shouts and some tongue-wagging, but he was just having fun, not crying. I noticed he was playing with an assortment of toy balls in what looked like a small tennis ball tube, which is something I think D would like too. Anyone out there have any suggestions for a successful 2.5 hour flight with a 1 year old? I must admit, it’s kind of making me nervous.
