Sunday, March 15, 2009

The Longest Flight EVER

It's 9pm right now and I'm writing this post from my flight from PR. That probably doesn't mean much to you., but since our flight was scheduled to land at 7pm, it means quite a bit to us. We still have 2 hours until we're scheduled to land, but the worst part is that Kaylani has only slept for 2 hours since 8:30am.

Today was not supposed to be like this. In fact, we booked the 3pm flight home from PR instead of the 6pm flight, which would have given us more time with our family (and at the pool), on purpose. If we had known that the 3pm flight would be leaving AFTER the 6pm flight, we probably would have done things quite a bit differently.

We're no strangers to flight delays. As a matter of fact, I personally have had some pretty awful flight experiences, and I like to think I dealt with them pretty well (except the time half my wedding party didn't make it to my bachelor party. That time sucked). But like I've said many times before, things are different now that we have Kaylani.

Kaylani only took an hour nap this morning, but we figured it would be okay since she could fall asleep while Mommy nursed her during takeoff. When we pre-boarded and got on the plane around 2:30, it looked like that was going to work. But the plane didn't pull away from the gate at 3pm as scheduled. As a matter of fact, it didn't even pull away at 4pm. I would have even been happy if it pulled away at 5pm but it didn't.

Apparently the water switch valve was malfunctioning. They gave a few updates, but Kaylani, Mommy, and I didn't really care what the problem was. We just wanted to get airborn so Kaylani could nap and we could get home. Kaylani nursed and fell asleep for 5 minutes several times, and Daddy rocked her until she fell asleep for 5 minutes several more times, but to Kaylani, each time was nothing more than a 5 minute power nap.

At 4:30pm, they told us we could get off the plane if we wanted to, so we did because we needed some food. Of course, Kaylani fell asleep as soon as Mommy walked her in the Baby Bjorn. But 30 minutes later when they told us everything was fixed and we could get back on the plane, Kaylani was awake again. We didn't get everyone back on board for another 30 min, and diuring that time, Daddy almost had her back asleep. But as soon as they made him sit down she was back awake.

To add insult to injury, our flight left so late that we had to be re-routed around Florida because of a Shuttle launch. That meant that our 3.5 hour flight got extended by an hour and that we wouldn't be landing until 11pm, or 4 hours late. Throw baggage and the drive home from PHL in there, and we that means we won't be rolling in until probably after midnight.

A 4 hour delay is just part of air travel nowadays and I can uinderstand that...kinda. But I just feel bad for pushing Kaylani so much. She normally takes two 2 hour naps, and is in bed by 9::30pm at the latest. Today, she'll have taken two 1 hour naps and go to bed around 12:30am.

To her credit, she's done as good as we could hope for. No major meltdowns (though she did have her 2 in-flight poops already and we still have 2 hours left), and she still smiles at people most of the time. She's sleeping right now (and hopefully for the next 2 hours), but let's just say we're not exactly looling forward to our next flight. We don't have one scheduled yet, and you can bet that we won't anytime soon either, for Kaylani's sake that is.

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