Switzerland 2018
My husband and I fell in love with travel before we decided
to have children. Since we had our
first, Wren, we have managed to keep traveling.
When I became pregnant with our second, Flynt, we were determined to still
travel. Before Flynt was even born, he
had a plane ticket to Switzerland, so here we are several months later in
Switzerland with 2 small children.
Some of the challenges with traveling with two people, who
though small in size, require a significant amount of luggage. They also are not
capable of helping to transfer any of that luggage and tie up at least one hand
or need carried. The goal was to get the
luggage to a small enough number of pieces that we were able to get on and off
of trains and be able to walk from the train stations to our hotels. This was no small feat. With much head scratching we managed to get
it down to 7 pieces of luggage: Wren’s
tiny purple back pack that is just big enough for her to carry some crayons and
a coloring book for entertainment on the air plane, the frame baby
carrier (with Flynt in it), two checked roller bags (Jeff and I share one and one is for the kids, a carry on roller bag, a
large back pack (the large back pack was a little bit of a fail in planning and packing and should have been a medium back pack) and a duffel bag which was sub-divided into small drawstring
bags for a diaper bag, entertainment, bottles etc. to survive the plane
trip. Although slow moving and
cumbersome, we are mobile.
We got to the airport and through the first leg of our
journey without incident. When we
boarded our plane for the second leg of the journey, the man behind us kept
making silly faces at Flynt and making him laugh. It seemed like good luck to have someone who
liked kids near us. Our luck ran out
about 20 minutes outside of Chicago on our way to Zurich. Flynt was not his normal adorable chubby
self. He turned in to full on fuss-a-saurous
rex mode and I was doing everything in my power to calm him while abiding the
“fasten seat belt” rule on the air plane.
He finally seemed happy for about 30 seconds when I put him over my
right shoulder before he exploded in a baby formula volcano all over me, the
seat and the poor unsuspecting people behind me. I could hear them scrambling to avoid the
foul, milky mess shooting their direction from between the two seats in front of them. They were trying to save their small carry on
items that were placed neatly under the seat in front of them that was now
awash in wet grossness. I felt really bad
but I wasn’t sure what to do in that situation and having Flynt puke all over
me and a couple of strangers was infinitely better than him puking all over his
sister, she has a fantastic memory and has been known to hold a grudge. It all happened so fast I really didn't have much time to react. By the time I realized what was happening he was pretty much done. Despite my attempts to get help the
steward/stewardess call button was ignored when pushed many times and we were
on our own to clean up the mess.
The blankets that they gave us for the overseas flight were
deployed as towels to clean up the worst of it.
The man behind me had about a dozen paper towels later in the flight, once the fasten seat belt sign was turned off, to
try and dry off the thigh of his pants.
He was very kind about the whole thing and said he had children of his
own so he understood. His wife didn’t
seem to speak much English and did not seem to feel as sympathetic as her
husband. The man didn’t make any more
silly faces at Flynt for the rest of the flight. I felt terrible but wasn't sure what to do.
My hoodie was soaked, my seat was soaked, my t-shirt was
pretty wet, my bra was wet, my pants were wet. I did have a clean t-shirt in one of the
carry on bags but no dry pants. I didn’t
really matter about the pants since the seat was so wet. I sat on one of the blankets to try and stay
drier and changed my shirt. There was no
avoiding the fact that I smelled like sour milk.
Meals were a little tricky with a lap infant and a
toddler. We managed to get through the
process without wearing too much food. I
was still flustered from the baby fountain incident and pretty much skipped
dinner and just tried to shovel food into kids.
Flynt seemed to have recovered from his tummy trouble and ate a bunch of
baby food and fell asleep.
Jeff took Flynt once he fell asleep and Wren fell asleep on
me. I find it amazing how much toddlers
wiggle in their sleep and once she was out I could flop her around and she
never woke up. She slept for about 4.5
hours. I had a few times that I drifted
off, but I'm not a good sleeper in the best of circumstances. Sleeping on the plane had it’s definite
challenges. Between being on the isle
and having people shake my seat, bump me, hit my face with jackets and all
sorts of other minor rudeness’s that kept me from actually falling asleep I
also had a flopping toddler on me, and I was freezing. Between still being wet from the baby-splosion
and trying to say warm under the only blanket available, which was also wet and
reeked of spit-up, I slept in 5 minute intervals. Jeff said he only did a little better since
every time he drifted off he felt like he was going to drop Flynt.
The rest of the flight was with out incident and we made it
to Zurich a little stinky, tired but with all of our luggage and in relatively
good spirits. It sounds horrible but it
was actually better than expected, lol!
The cab ride to the airport. |
I just read through the first 3 days of your blog and there was a lot of information and so many good photos that I am going to read through it again and take more time to look through the photos. I love your travel blogs. It's almost like being there.
ReplyDeleteThe second leg of your trip there was unfortunate. You should discuss keeping food inside his body with Flynt, for next time.
I just noticed that my comment is listed as unknown. It Jim / Dad. I edited the comment box to see if I could get an identity.
ReplyDelete