Bahama Mama

Okay, I know Bahama Mamas are drinks, but hey I’m a mama and I was in the Bahamas. After the painful plane flight with our toddler, it was nice to say that the rest of our trip was surprisingly fun and relaxing. Little Lewie easily sat in his stroller during our jaunts to and from the beach, he giggled furiously while trying to swim in the pool, and he even enjoyed jet skiing and parasailing with us. (Hey, you gotta love the lax rules in the Bahamas.) No, Lil’ Lewie didn’t actually glide in the sky with us, but he did go on the boat while my husband and I alternated turns between watching him and flying at 600 ft above the ocean surface.

My husband was the first to go. Lil’ Lewie watched curiously as the harness was fastened around Daddy and Daddy was led to the back of the boat. What’s going on? his little mind appeared to be thinking. Then, from out of nowhere, the rainbow colored sail was released, and Daddy was swept into the sky by the likes of a big colorful balloon. What the hell? A big balloon just came and snatched up Daddy! “Don’t worry, Little Lewie,” I said trying to console him. “Look Daddy’s waving to us. He’s okay.” Little Lewie took one look at me with his furrowed brows and then looked again at Daddy who now appeared to be the size of a dot in the sky. The poor boy. I prayed to myself that the whole experience wouldn’t traumatize him. He remained noticeably anxious until he started to see that Daddy was now becoming larger and moving closer to us again. Whew, that was a close call. We almost lost Daddy forever, his little expression seemed to say as Daddy glided down from his big colorful balloon back onto the boat. Then, Lil’ Lewie had the pleasure of watching the process all over again with me.

Since we felt Lil’ Lewie was still too young to enjoy sight seeing, we spent our entire trip enjoying the beach and the pool. The time went by fast, and while we enjoyed doing things together as a family, we also made sure to give each other some needed alone time to swim, use the Jacuzzi, or just relax. It wasn’t the most romantic of trips as we used to be able to use the Jacuzzi, jet ski, or relax on the beach together, but hey, a wise person once said that having children is the best form of birth control, and since we’re not ready to have another baby, having Little Lewie around certainly worked wonders in that area.

What was Little Lewie’s favorite part of the trip? I think there was a tie. He loved the pool, but he loved the elevator leading to our hotel room on the seventh floor too. In fact, he loved pushing the elevator buttons so much that he’d get his little pointer finger ready for action the minute he saw us enter the hotel lobby. It was his big moment.

Yes, for four full days, I was a Bahama Mama. Would I do it all over again with a two year-old? You betcha.

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Soaring the Cranky Skies: Traveling with My Toddler Part II

Okay, so after my little boy burst into a full out tantrum in the airport and forced us to spill a smoothie all over the airport carpet, we picked his limp, screaming body up and proceeded to do the walk of shame all the way until we boarded the airplane. I sighed as I thought we wouldn’t have to wrestle with Lil’ Lewie anymore after finding our seats. Boy was I in for a rude awakening!

I took the window seat, Lil’ Lew reluctantly sat in the middle, and my husband took the aisle seat. We bought a CARES Child Aviation Restraint System, which was supposed to easily keep Lil’ Lew situated in his seat, but as we attached it to the back of the seat and buckled the straps around his little body, our boy fought the straps and screamed with all his might. “I thought this would be better than using our car seat,” I said apologetically to my husband who was losing his patience by the second. Quickly, I reached for our bag of goodies—snacks, books, new toys, etc. “How about a treat, Lewie?” I asked as I grabbed one of his favorite wafer snacks and waved it in front of him. The response was a continuous whine while he pushed my hand with the wafer away. “Okay, let’s look at your new book? Look there’s a chicken. What’s this? Is this an egg? Can you lift up the egg to see what’s underneath?”

“Waah, Waaaaahhhh,” he replied as he proceeded to scoot his little body down the seat and out of the restraint system.

“How did he do that?” my husband asked, surveying the straps.

“Great! In less than two minutes, he figured a way out of the restraint system and the airplane seatbelt. That’s just great!”

We tried the restraint again; this time it seemed to keep him in, but he’d continue to scoot down until the buckle and strap were rubbing against his face and neck.

“That can’t be comfortable,” Lewie mumbled. “I’m going to take him out. It’s making him miserable.”

Fortunately, the flight crew didn’t make us use the system, so we packed it away, but that didn’t end our little boy’s fight. He tried lying on the seat and assuming all types of positions, but to no avail. It was obvious that he was tired, but the airplane seat just wasn’t comfortable. He didn’t want our laps either.

I reached for another toy. “Lewie, look it’s your very own cell phone. It’s your friend. He wants to talk to you. He wants you to enjoy your first flight.”

“Like that will happen,” my husband replied.

Lewie took the phone and appeared to be amused for a few minutes during our lift off. Yes, success, I thought, but when the flight crew started walking down the aisle and handing out drinks, Lil Lewie was miserable once again. He wanted out of his seat altogether. He pushed and pushed my husband’s legs as he shrieked, wanting to have access to the aisle; after all, in his little mind, he couldn’t understand why he wasn’t allowed to walk in the aisle like everyone else. We were just mean jerks.

The three hour flight repeated a vicious cycle. Ten minutes of peace and quiet while I entertained him with one of his toys, ten minutes of unrelenting crying and throwing himself off the seat and onto the floor in front of him, and ten minutes of whining while he struggled to get comfortable enough to take a nap. The cycle never stopped, and he was never able to take a nap until our plane landed and we were finally situated in our long awaited hotel room. I crossed my fingers that the flight home would be different. It wasn’t.

Soaring the Cranky Skies: Flying with My Toddler

Okay, I knew flying with Little Lewie, my now 21 month old, would be difficult. There's a reason why there are plenty of websites created just for giving advice about flying and traveling with kids. I took it seriously. Really. I hid some of Little Lewie’s favorite toys for weeks and bought new, interesting ones to entertain him on the flight. I packed his favorite, comfort blanket. (I swear my kid is just like Linus from Snoopy and the Peanuts gang.) I packed milk and favorite snacks, and I even bought Little Lewie his own seat (not cheap to say the least).

The trip itself was planned around Little Lewie. We love traveling to the West Coast and to Europe, but for us, traveling to those destinations are at least six hours away by plane. Instead, we agreed on going to the Bahamas—it was only a three hour flight, and we could fly nonstop from New York. Surely, he will be able to handle a three hour flight, I thought. He might be a little cranky in the beginning, but we’ll be able to entertain him or help him fall asleep. I even called his pediatrician; the nurse assured me that Little Lewie wouldn’t need any type of sedative. “He’ll be fine for three hours,” she said.

So, less than three days ago, we woke up Little Lewie at 5 a.m., so we could get him dressed and ready to leave with us for the airport. (We had a 9 a.m. flight.) He seemed to be in good spirits and feeling well. He drank his entire morning bottle and even had a little bit to eat. Every time I glanced at him from behind my seat, he was smiling or at least looked pleasantly amused. As we crossed the border into New York, however, Lewie began to vomit uncontrollably. “Oh my God, we need to pull over,” I gasped as my husband pulled onto the shoulder of the highway. Our Little Lewie never gets sick. I mean never. But there, all over his brand new travel outfit and car seat, was a nasty yellowish (well now you get the picture). We pulled him out of his car seat onto the grass, and my husband cleaned up the car seat while I began to change Little Lewie into the one and only outfit I packed in his diaper bag. (Thank goodness we didn’t need another one.) We weren’t exactly prepared for a vomiting episode. Baby wipes and Dunkin’ Donuts napkins were all we had. Somehow, my poor little one managed to get vomit in his hair and so while I cleaned him up for the most part, he still smelled like vomit for the rest of plane trip—not exactly ideal for my husband and I who already get travel sickness on airplanes.

Getting our tickets and passing through security at the airport went relatively smooth, but we were dumb to take him out of his stroller at the gate. I had the bright idea of trying out his new little backpack, monkey harness. (Yes, I know, it’s like a leash for kids.) The harness was recommended for toddlers in an airport. After all, I didn’t want him to run out of my reach and get lost in the crowd. Well, Little Lewie didn’t appreciate his monkey buddy. If fact, he loathed him. Every time I would tug on the tail to let Little Lewie know he was going in the wrong direction, my child would scream, jolt backward, and hit his head on the floor, which prompted, of course, a louder fit of screaming and crying. People at the airport scolded me with their dagger eyes—What an awful mother. She needs a leash and still can’t control her own kid. I felt shameful. My husband tried to help me, but as Little Lewie used all of his might to free his body from the backpack, my husband’s newly purchased smoothie tipped over and spilled all over the airport carpet. We had nothing to clean it up. We used everything we had to clean up Little Lewie’s vomit. Now people really hated us. Evidently, it appeared that we not only couldn’t control our own kid, but now we were the white trash that made messes at the airport and didn’t clean up after ourselves…TO BE CONTINUED