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DAY 4 CONTINUED:  The airport experience with three little kids is a little crazy.  The kids were actually quite good, but just the management of them all would have been impossible on my own.  Once we made it through security, we stopped at a little play area before going to our gate.  This provided a perfect opportunity for a potty break.  Unfortunately, Charlotte managed to get her underwear wet while sitting on the potty so I had to make the trek back and forth to the bathroom with a fresh pair of “airplane underwear.”  By the time I was finished (the play area was not close to the bathroom), I could only allow Charlotte 10 minutes to play before we scuttled them all off towards the gate. 

Once we got to the gate, I had to wait in line to get tags for my stroller and fill water bottles.  We thought this was a good time to get out our sandwiches, but with all the other little tasks we had done already our time was shorter than we thought.  We were  all a few bites into the sandwiches when it was time to line up to board.  Between Nicole not wanting to be in her stroller and packing up everything quickly, I felt a little stressed and chaotic.  As we waited in line, I handed my boarding passes to my mom while I searched for a sucker to keep Nicole distracted from her incarceration in the stroller.  My mom put the passes in her bag and looked for a treat for her as well.  Once Nicole was settled, I looked for  my passes and couldn’t find them and didn’t remember handing them to my mother who didn’t remember putting them in her bag.  As the line moved forward, my search became more frantic.  When my turn came, the boarding passes had not been located.  For fear of not finding seats together, my mom boarded the plane with Bryan and Nicole while I dumped out my bag and started searching the gate area with the older children.  The gate attendant took pity on my and called me back to the line and allowed me to board.  As I walked down the corridor to the plane, I was met by a flight attendant holding my boarding passes who said “I’ll take these up to the front, you better get back there—Bryan is trying to help!” (the last part made me chuckle, but I feared that Nicole was on the plane screaming).  By the time I got to our seats, Nicole was settled and happy.

The plane ride went well.  I sat between Isaac and Charlotte. Isaac enjoyed the maze book that I had purchased for him while Charlotte entertained herself with a book of preschool activities that included things such as continuing patterns, identifying shapes, and other preschool concepts.  Nicole sat between my mom and Bryan and required fulltime attention, but behaved well.  A few times she insisted on a brief visit with her mother.  I discovered that with my pregnant tummy, it was impossible for me to hold Nicole on my lap and have my tray out—I had to put her on the side of my lap in order to let her color.

We got off the plane in St. Louis for our layover. Since the noisy airplane bathroom scared Isaac too much to use it, we started with potty breaks before finding our gate.  Our gate had the perfect location, right across from the bathroom with a small table where the kids could spread out for an art project.  Once I got the kids settled, I started looking for my cell phone so that I could call Zach.  It didn’t take long to figure out that the phone was not in my pocket or any of my bags.  I hurried over to our gate and discovered that the plane we had arrived on had already left and I was thus out of luck.  Other than losing my phone, our layover went well.  It lasted about 2 hours, but the kids were well entertained and we even had time to have a dinner of hot airport pizza.

The second flight seemed very short by comparison.  Isaac had just enough time to  finish his maze book and Charlotte finished a few more pages in her preschool activity book. 

By the time we landed in Columbus, it was late and I think we were all a little tired and anxious to get to my parent’s house.  At bag claim we split our responsibilities.  My mom went to go get her car, Bryan kept track of Nicole (who did not want anything to do with her stroller at this point and wanted nothing more than a chance to run around), and I watched for bags with the older kids.  We packed light, but there were six of us and three car seats.  As the bags came off, my pile of luggage looked enormous and I looked pathetic in my pregnant state with two young kids at my side.  The lady next to me flagged down a skycap worker and handed him a $20 with the instruction not to let me lift another bag.  I was very grateful and emotional, as you can imagine—I am pregnant after all.

We all headed out to the curb to wait for my mother.  Somehow she exited the airport  and got lost on her way back from airport parking.  She had to stop for directions to get back to the airport before we could load up our belongings and head for home.  By the time we got to my parent’s house it was 2:00 AM.  The kids changed into their pajamas and climbed into their beds on the floor by the fireplace.  When they started fighting over blankets, I had Charlotte join me on the couch bed.  Isaac joined me shortly afterwards when he decided that he was afraid something would come in through the fireplace.