Off to the US

Our adventure to the US has begun and it definitely got off to a shaky start. I’ve always been a day before packer but learned the hard way that with 2 kiddos you just can’t get it all done the day before. By 11pm the night before we left I finally gave up and crawled into bed telling myself whatever we don’t have we can just buy there. Set the alarm for 4am to give myself 2 hours to finish up packing before the taxi came. Tylor woke up 3 times before morning arrived, the last time at 3:30 when I debated whether to sleep or get up – of course I chose sleep. All of a sudden it was 5:00, no alarm and we were in panic rush mode from the beginning. Steve threw everything still laying around in piles into the suitcases; I fed Tylor, woke up Jaydon and got all the last minute snacks prepared.

We made it to the airport on time but as we were catching our breathe in the lounge I realized that Tylor’s spare diapers did not get packed in the carry-on, no diapers to purchase in duty-free so we only had the 6 in my diaper bag for the 16 hour flight that was ahead of us. The flight itself was fine. Jaydon now has a long enough attention span that the TV can entertain him for long stretches. On the plane, he skipped his afternoon nap and 7pm bedtime came and went without him sleeping. Finally at 9pm Doha time he fell asleep and we landed at 1am Doha time so he was NOT a happy boy getting off the plane.

In Houston we had a 2+ hour layover and landed early. While waiting for our bags at customs one of those cute beagle dogs came around and tagged us for having food. I had packed hotdogs, cheese, yoghurt etc. for the flight not knowing what and if Jaydon would eat airplane food. This meant that after we had our luggage we had to go in the back room and get everything x-rayed, answer ‘20-questions’ about where we came from and what we had in the luggage, then get a dressing-down from a snobby customs agent about how our tupperware of cooked hotdogs and strawberries was putting the whole country at risk of deadly dieses (at this point is was 3am Doha time and none of us were in the mood…).

We re-checked our luggage and found the line to get our Denver boarding passes issued. At about this time we realized that our flight was departing in 50 minutes and we weren’t even in the right concourse yet. I found an agent who confirmed that we didn’t need boarding passes to go through the next stage of security so we got out of line and ran to the gate. When we arrived they had already started boarding. We get to the counter while they are calling for all the stand-by customers to get their seats and they can’t get our reservation to come up on the computer. The agent is too distracted with boarding the plane so she sends Steve off to customer service to get our boarding passes figured out. I stand at the gate with 2 very exhausted boys trying to keep them entertained while they board the entire plane.

Finally, Steve gets back as they are calling the last rows and the gate agent still can’t find my ticket (however is able to find Tylor who is the infant linked to my ticket???). She off handedly tells us something about needing to catch the next flight which puts us into panic mode. Finally a senior Continental rep shows up and basically has me begging him to get us on the plane. He clicks around on the computer and finally finds the tickets (or gives up – we weren’t sure which) and just has them open the doors for us. He never actually gave us any boarding passes and told us to just find any open seats to sit in. Well as can be expected there are NO seats open and available next to each other and Steve and I both know now is not the time to see if Jaydon is up for flying by himself. The flight attendants are busy trying to find any open space for our carry-ons and I’m frantically looking for seats. From the back of the plan I hear “Hey Mariah what do you need?” look up with relief to see a co-worker/neighbor. He’s already getting out of his seat and in the process had to have the gentleman in the aisle move for him. I make eye-contact with this stranger and ask if he wouldn’t mind also finding a different seat. He agrees (like he could say no to a desperate mother with a 3 month strapped to her and 2.5yr old in tow) and we finally get on our way.

Oh yeah, and I should mention that in the chaos we did not grab more diapers for Tylor out of the luggage.  Fortunately he’s not much of a pooper so we made is the whole 24 hours of travel with 6 diapers and actually still had one left when we landed in Denver.