All I can say is I had the worst flights ever getting here. It probably didn’t help that I was working off of about 3 hours sleep, but still even on 12 hours sleep it would of been horrible.
So, I wake Jayden up at 4am and we head to the airport, which by the way, Jayden only slept about 20 mins in the car on the way up, and I had had a really hard time getting him to go to sleep the night before. He was too excited about riding on a “big big airplane”. We get to the airport with plenty of time, but we decide to curbside check our bags, just so we didn’t have to haul 3 suitcases and all our carry-ons and my stroller with Jayden in it inside. The guy checking our bags hands us our boarding passes and tells me that I’ll have to get our seats changed at the gate because they put us in an exit row and you can’t have 2 year olds in the exit row. OK, when I bought the tickets online, I had to specify that I was flying with a 2 year old, why the heck would they assign me those seats????? So, Jayden, mom, and I get through security without much hassle. I managed to find the family security point, that was just for families with kids and so we cruised on through. I was thinking that maybe we were off to a great start, little did I know that this was pretty much the best part of the trip and things were just going to get progressively worse from here. I get to the gate and grab our 3 tickets and head up to the counter. The lady takes our tickets and says she’ll get me and Jayden new seats together outside of the exit row, but mom didn’t have a seat on the plane yet, so she couldn’t reassign her. We wait around, and finally our names get paged and she hands me mine and Jayden’s new seat assignments which happen to be an aisle and a window seat in the same row, but mom still doesn’t have a seat. So, the plane starts boarding, Jayden and I get on and I tell mom to have someone get me if she can’t get on. Luckily, mom gets a seat right in the row in front of us and I ask the guy who was suppose to be sitting in between Jayden and I if he would mind switching seats with my mom. He was really nice and had no problem with it, so luckily the 3 of us got to sit in the same row on the flight from Seattle to Denver. Jayden did about as well as I thought he would. He was kind of all over the place, wanted to escape out of the row and run down the aisles, jump on the seats, pat the guys hair in front of us, and pretty much half way into the flight kept telling me he was all done flying on the airplane. We make it to Denver and find where our connecting flight is. Jayden and I then go on a hunt for food, then sit and wait at the gate for the next flight. Jayden almost falls asleep sitting in his stroller at the gate, so I was pretty sure I could get him to sleep on the plane as long as I could flip up the arm rest and get him to lay down on my lap for 2 seconds. Finally it’s time for us to get on the plane, I take out our boarding passes, Jayden and I are in row 4, mom is in row 14. Not sure why they couldn’t get us closer together. Another thing that peeves me about United, is that they don’t let families with kids board first. You have to wait for your section to board and try to get down to the plane and collapse your stroller while keeping control of your child and bags along with the mob of people getting on the plane that for some reason feel like they need to practically run and are acting panicky like they aren’t going to be able to find their seat and stow their carryons in the overhead bins and the plane might leave without them. Jayden and I get down to the plane, and once Jayden sees it, is not excited at all about getting on. He keeps telling me, “no more big airplanes”. The pilot thinks he’s cute and tries to tell him to not be afraid. Jayden wasn’t afraid, he was tired and cranky and did not want to be cooped up for another 90 mins on a big loud airplane. So, I haul Jayden and our bags onto the plane, get to our row to discover that Jayden and I are sitting across the freaking aisle from each other. I’m on the aisle seat and he’s in the middle seat on the other side. Fan-freaking-tastic. I throw our bags into my seat, pick Jayden back up and fight my way up the stream of people who are glaring at me for going the wrong way on the airplane, because remember all they are thinking about is making sure they hurry up to get in their seat. I find a flight attendent explain that this just isn’t going to work, and she quickly fixes the situation. Now Jayden and I are together, but we’re in the bulkhead row. Which means all my bags that have food, water, books, computer, toys, and anything else that might entertain Jayden have to be stowed up above. It also means that the armrest would not go up because our trays are stored in there, which means I couldn’t create a big seat that I could lay Jayden down on. Jayden starts fighting me before the plane even takes off. I’m afraid I was that mother. I was the mother with the out of control child on the plane who was making everyone hate the fact that they were on that plane and wish they could all strangle my child. However, all Jayden wanted to do was run down the aisle. Not really an option, and he wouldn’t stay in his seat, so for the majority of the flight, I forced him to sit on my lap and I pinned him down with my arms. You can guess how well he took that. There was a lot of crying, yelling, repeated no’s being thrown my way. I’m totally fried at this point. We tried watching a movie, reading books, singing songs, playing his favorite games, eating crackers, listening to my iPod, nothing worked. Everything was NO! And if he wasn’t yelling or throwing a fit, he was still talking nonstop. Nonstop about airplanes, dad, nana, papa, grandpa, grandma, Jayden’s new house, etc… The poor kid was just super tired. The people in first class kept turning around glaring at me and shaking their heads. About 3/4 of the way through the flight, the women next to me goes, ‘god! doesn’t that kid ever shut up!’ I start crying and just say, ‘What would you like me to do?’ I mean at least I was keeping him from kicking and jumping on her. On an airplane there just aren’t a lot of options, you just have to make it to the end. We finally land in Wichita. Jayden is ecstatic to get off the plane. He pretty much runs. However, we have to wait at the bottom of the ramp for our stroller. Since we were one of the first ones off, we stood there as all these people funneled off the plane, glaring at me and my kid, a couple of them saying, ‘there’s the kid’. Mom finally gets off the plane and I was like, ‘did you hear Jayden that whole time?’ She goes, ‘I heard someone, I was hoping it wasn’t him’. No such luck, all the other kids on the plane obviously had got their naps in. My stroller finally shows up, I quickly set it up, strap Jayden in and head off to baggage claim. Jayden was asleep before we even got up the ramp and into the airport. We didn’t have to wait long for our bags, Royal was right outside with the car, Jayden was so asleep in his stroller that he didn’t even wake up when I took him out and strapped him into his carseat. I was glad to be done flying, but I pretty much just wanted to go sit in a dark room and not come out for a long time.

By the time Royal had picked us up from the airport the moving truck had already been to the house and completely unloaded, so it was really nice to not have to haul boxes after flying all that time, which in turn means I didn’t acquire any new bruises, hallelujia. At least now, it’s been a few days and I feel much better, with that horrible flight behind me. But I can tell you I am NOT looking foward to flying back to Washington in September.

The weather here is freaking hot. Not as hot as poor Kaylee, but still hot. We went to a farmers market today, and tomorrow we’re going to try and go to El Dorado State Park and then a splash park for Jayden in the afternoon. My parents and Royal’s parents are still here and the house is still in shambles, so I still feel a little crazy like I don’t have a house, but I think I’ll be okay. :) I can’t wait to have more visitors!!! Come on, you know you always wanted to visit Kansas…