What Came Up On Our Flight to Arizona???

This is one entry where you'll definitely thank me for NOT posting any pictures! First let me say, we all made it safely to Arizona. It's 8 p.m. local time, and the kids are sound asleep. I'm sitting in the dark hotel room writing this entry. Our hotel is BEAUTIFUL....I only wish we could enjoy the amenities more....a very nice pool/patio/"beach" area, hot tub, and swanky bar. Of course we're stuck in the room with the kids, but oh well....maybe our next trip?

Anyway....as I said, we made it safely, but not without incident (of course! I mean, this is US we're talking about!). The second leg of our trip was from Chicago to Phoenix. The last half hour of the flight was extremely turbulent. So much so that I commented to Bill, "I think I'm going to have to start worrying about throwing up when we fly because this is making me really sick to my stomach. I'm surprised this isn't bothering the kids." The words were barely out of my mouth, when poor little Rachel, who was on my lap, started crying, then making strange mouth movements, then.....yeah, you guessed it. Threw up. All over herself. All over me. All over the seat, the seat back in front of us, the side of the plane underneath the window, the floor. I caught the second wave of it in my hands and the third wave of it with the airsickness bags I finally thought to ask Bill for. Although, I must say, it's really hard to get a baby to puke into an airsickness bag. She kept swatting it away. I don't know what I was more worried about....throwing up myself in response (remember, I was already queasy!) or causing some other nearby passengers to throw up because of the awful smell. Fortunately neither of those things happened. Poor Rachel was just beside herself, and pretty much screamed for the last 15 minutes of the flight. By that point, I didn't even care that the screaming was probably disturbing the other passengers.

Through all this, Megan was just sitting there as calm as can be, right next to the spew fountain. She barely seemed to notice what was going on. Wow! This from the girl who used to wail hysterically, "She's CRYING!!" every time infant Rachel cried.

For the sake of your own stomachs I will spare you any further details as to what Rachel had been eating earlier in the day. Let's just say it wasn't pretty. Through all this, we feel fortunate for several things. One, she was sitting on my lap (at the window seat) rather than Bill's (who was sitting in the aisle seat). I'm sure the passengers across the row would have gotten a not so nice shower had Rachel been sitting on Bill's lap. Two, we were in the second to last row of the plane, so we were able to stay pretty incognito about the whole thing, and also were able to deplane last, so we could talk to the flight attendants and apologize profusely. I tried to clean up the best I could but baby wipes just wouldn't do the job completely. They were so nice about it, and the one flight attendant even said that she and the other flight attendants had felt like throwing up, too (proof that the turbulence really was bad!). Since we were the last ones off the plane, the cleaning crew was already aboard and working their way to the back of the plane (yeah, I guess they really do clean the planes after each flight!). It was funny because we got to hear one of the flight attendants say on the loudspeaker, "Cleaning crew, back on row 25 here we have some,.......uhhhh.......vomit that needs cleaning up." Of course, we were also glad this happened on the second leg of our trip and not the first. I was definitely thankful that I had packed spare clothes in my backpack for Rachel (I wasn't so lucky for myself, however).

Despite all this, the girls really did great. They were so good in the airports, during the flights, and waiting while we got our car. Even Rachel, within 10 minutes of puking, was her usual happy self again. And even though we didn't get dinner until what would be 8 p.m. Michigan time, and get them to bed until what would be 10 p.m. in Michigan, we managed to get through the day tantrum free. They're sleeping soundly now.....hopefully this is our one incident during this trip and the rest will be great. I'll keep you posted!