Preparing to Fly

In exactly one week, Myrick and I are hopping on a plane to Dallas/Ft. Worth to visit Candace and her two girls and Joanne and her two boys. I am so excited to see these two women as mommies having known both of them since elementary and middle school. Of their four combined children, I have only met one of them so my anticipation continues to build! I just have to make it through all of my grading and one more week of school and...

a cold that both Myrick and I have. Yep, that's right. Doesn't illness always strike at the most inopportune time? Not only do I need the extra sleep right now to fight this off, but of course grades are due this week which prevents me from getting the hours I need. And so it goes.

I have tons of anxiety about our airplane trip. We will have three legs to get down there which isn't terribly conducive to Myrick taking a nap. And of course the more connections you have to make, the higher the probability of missing one of them. And being the busy toddler that she is, I can't foresee her sitting on my lap as being a pleasant thing. I'm having terrible daydreams of her running and screaming wildly up and down the aisles with irritated passengers shooting me those "you're an awful mom" look. So tomorrow I will head into town and try to find some trip toys that I can pull out as needed throughout the journey. Nate and I briefly discussed the idea of getting a stripped-down portable DVD player... and then decided that just doesn't go with our values of active parenting. I will be an active and most likely exhausted parent of a young child on a very long journey. My mom did give Myrick a pop-up airplane book for Christmas so we have been looking at that in preparation. And a friend from school who has a 3 year old that just went on a long plane ride loaned me her DVD called "Shae by Air" about a little girl preparing for her first big plane trip. It teaches flying social skills for little ones - pretty neat. Granted this isn't Myrick's first plane ride, but it is her first in quite awhile, and she has very different needs now than she did just 7 short months ago. I hope all of my anxiety is for naught, but she has truly entered the "terrible two's" which makes me nervous...