oh boy. more than 12 hours of airport time alone with 2 small children can be pretty darn difficult. we have all spent the day recovering, primarily by rehydrating ourselves.
it was not THAT bad--honestly, the kids did wonderfully, given the circumstances, and tomorrow we should all be back on track. the first flight was 3 hours, and ava spent the majority of it watching Little Bear on the computer, and Carter slept for 1/6 of it. Then we had a long layover in Baltimore where we saw the Shamu plane, got a 'smoothie' (aka a milkshake) from Starbucks, and ran around like crazy. Then we got on our next flight, whereupon Ava experienced difficulties buckling her Shamu into his seatbelt. Suddenly she uttered a relatively benign curse word (phrase). And I will say that is was NOT one of the many non-benign curse words I yelled at the rodeo that start with F and S. Nevertheless, we were on a plane, with other people, and after I recovered from my shock, I told her that it was not a nice word. She then said "is SH..... (oh, god please don't let her say it)....UGAR ok?"
"yes, sugar is fine"
"is hammit ok? mammit? gammit? how about bammit?"
and thus began the curse word rhyming game. i finally recovered from my shame to glance around at my companions, and was so relieved to note that most were 20-ish with a lot of tatoos. who knows what they were going to be doing in albany, but i was happy they were with us, and not some 40-ish uber-parents.
we landed in albany, went potty in a big way--"dum-de-dum -- are you finished, ava?" and then went to baggage to retrieve our luggage. got the smartcarte, found our bags, loaded them up, headed to continental to check in for the flight to saranac lake. technical difficulties at continental, can you please use the kiosk over here? ok, so we wheel over there. no luck, more technical difficulties. as i am trying to get the customer service rep to help me, ava managed to upturn the smartcarte and all of our carry-on luggage (heavy) on top of herself. she basically was completely buried by it. it was very traumatic, but she recovered. there is nothing like looking down your 3-year old's legs flailing underneath a suitcase and a large metal cart(e). and i had carter on my back, so bending down without ejecting him was nearly impossible. we finally got checked in, re-entered security, killed 1/2 hour there, got pizza, killed 1/2 hour there, and then faced another 1.5 hours of waiting. which turned into 2.5 hours. by the time our 19-seat plane arrived, carter had fallen asleep, we had purchased Charlotte's Web and were on chapter 10, and I had given up completely on cleanliness. We zoomed home, and the kids finally were tucked in by 10 pm.
Today, we unpacked, cleaned and dealt with the mail. Tomorrow is the grocery store. Peter was supposed to go, but I was so exhausted I could not even come up with a list. I figured we have Cheerios and milk and coffee and cream and grapefruit. Plus toys and a bathtub. We're good. What else could one need?
