Holiday Travels - The Airports

We spent two weeks in Ohio over the holidays. That of course involves taking planes cross-country with a three year old and eighteen month old.

From California to Ohio we had to get to the airport early and had a layover in Las Vegas. For added fun, the airline asked for proof of Josie's age while we were checking in. Oops, we'd never been asked for that before so I didn't bother to bring it. We ended up having to buy another ticket since her obvious size and language skills were not enough to make her a lap passenger. That actually worked out well because we had some extra room. By the end of the day, Chris was sprawled across three seats while Xander played.

However there was panic before the return plane ride. It occurred to us the day before our flight that we needed to get proof of Josie's age. We didn't have an birth certificates in Ohio. The county offices to get birth certificates were closed. We called to check and there were no tickets available. We were able to get copies of some paperwork from the doctor and, thank goodness, the airline accepted them.

The ride to Ohio went fairly well and was uneventful. We'd been prepared with food, books, toys, kid phones and iPhone apps. Josie was also able to fall asleep while I was holding her without much fuss.

The return ride was a lot more difficult. We left the house at 9 for our noon flight. We had a short flight first and made it through that and even arrived at our layover early. Which sounds great on paper, but meant that we had time to kill with two squirrely kids.*

So we took our time, let Josie and Xander stop and look at things, and kept a lookout for things to do. I've heard that some airports have kid play areas. Las Vegas didn't seem to. Instead they have shiny, bright, loud, blinky slot machines. We had to repeatedly explain to Xander that they were adult games and he couldn't play. We found moving sidewalks and took a lot of time going back and forth on those. We looked out the windows at the airplanes and practiced out trust falls. We even splurged on ice cream.



Josie didn't get a nap in and within an hour of being in the air on the second flight she was losing it. Nothing made her happy. I had to walk the aisle with her. After a while of walking, I wondered if she'd fallen asleep. A couple people actually gave me a thumbs up that she was asleep. And no one gave me dirty looks, thank goodness.*

By the time we arrived back, Josie was ready to lose it again and I tried to walk her around. Fortunately she was distracted by some birds that had come in and were hanging around baggage claim. She and Xander and some other kids chased them around and had a blast, it was very cute. After we packed up, the kids zonked out. They didn't even realize that Santa had left presents in the house here when we arrived.

*Yeah, I was tired when I wrote this. The first leg was the long one with Josie losing it. The second leg was short and uneventful.