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.

This was our new idea for giving Flynt a place to wiggle around at the airport and other places on our trip where we don't want him on the ground.  He is about 6.5 months old and big for his age.  He puts everything he can in his mouth and rolling but not really crawling.  So far, it has worked great.  It is a collapsible ball pit.  I got it on Amazon for $19.  It folds up (the same way as those car windshield shades) to a 8 inch circle about 2 inches thick.  Anything to keep him off the disgusting airport floor while letting him move before and between flights seemed like a good idea.