Utah Trip Highlights: part 1—the airport.

A month ago we went for a trip to Utah to finally see our family after 15 months of not going "home". That's just 3 months shy of the length of my entire mission to Argentina. That adds up to 2 Thanksgivings, 2 Christmases, and just about 2 of everything else without a trip back west. We LOVE the west. We also love the east, which is probably part of what has kept us from a westward trip for so long, because we've been using so many days off to take road trips all over this coast (I miss road trips...).

After spending a perfect Christmas holiday here at "home," we were excited to still have something to look forward to come January while everyone else had to be settling back into normal post-holiday life. It's definitely the way to go if you get the January blues. :) Van caught RSV over New Years, which was probably the saddest thing I'd ever seen in my life, a little 2 month old that couldn't breathe or blow his nose or cough up nastiness on his own to get better. I was so scared he wouldn't be better before our trip--and who knows how that would go over on a plane--but thankfully, he was fully recovered just days before we left.

So, the airport. Exactly what I had been dreading for months. My biggest fear of taking Van in public anywhere, being a new mom and all, was that he would go absolutely ballistic and I would have no idea how to calm him down, while everyone watches from the sidelines shaking their heads..."That poor new mom has no clue what she's doing..." And they would be right. This fear magnifies when thinking of being stuck on a plane with no escape route. Blowout diapers, endless screaming, violent flailing, purple-faced, angry raisin...every imaginable reason for any nearby passenger to hate me and tell any person they come in contact with about the worst plane flight they ever had to tolerate. Please don't be me. Please sleep, Van, please do nothing but hibernate peacefully for 4 straight hours. That's possible, right?

Van was okay. On his first flight anyway. On flight 1, DCA to DEN, he screamed for takeoff, slept for 2.5 hours, then screamed for most of the landing. Luckily the flight wasn't packed so the person next to us had moved. Jon and I were a little embarrassed, but at least it was over. We had a 3 hour layover, which didn't go over so well with the dude, leading to his grand finale on our DEN to SLC flight, where Van pretty much hated every minute. And so did we. I could not wait to get off of the plane, and Van couldn't wait to be anywhere but sitting in the same place for another second. He gets bored quickly, so you can imagine our futile attempts to entertain him constantly in a 2-square-feet radius. There was fussing, there were tears (Van's, not mine), and in the end, nothing but relief to get off.

I'm happy to report that heading back to DC was much better, despite our second flight being delayed. Jon entertained Van on the moving walkways for at least 30 mins during our layover, and we were just happy he wasn't all tears. On the plane Van slept, ate, played, laid awake staring at the overhead lights for an hour, and slept again, just like a little angel baby. Granted, he did have a blowout diaper on the last flight that I had to go change in the tiny bathroom. (By the way, I NEVER use airplane bathrooms. Ask Jon. I'll hold it for hours before I go in there because they totally freak me out. It all goes back to some X-Files I saw when I was 12 or something about some creature coming out of the airplane lavatory...no creatures for me! No thanks!) Imagine me trying to roll up his messy onesie and wipe Van's entire body without letting him go rolling off the changing table, and while I'm doing this the seat belt light comes on and the pilot announces to prepare for landing, followed immediately by the plane getting jumpy and jolty, and I'm just trying not to get poopy. So fun. Anyway, we survived. We even had some passengers tell us what a good baby he was. BIG sigh of relief. I mean, we knew that, but to hear someone say it made me feel a little more like maybe I can do this parent thing in public after all.

Side note. While at the airport, we realized how living in a basement apartment in the winter might take a serious toll on our son's exposure to sunlight. He has none. We noticed this when he seemed so in awe by it at our first layover. Thus the many cute photos. We were in awe by it too. Maybe someday we could live somewhere where we can bask in our own natural light, if we're really lucky.