Day 164: "Ga-cob love airport"

March 9, 2011

Loooong travel day. No surprise there, I suppose. Traveling from Portland, Oregon to Detroit, Michigan is going to be long.

I was up before 4am, getting a call on my phone telling me that my second flight (out of Chicago) was cancelled and that we were rebooked on a later flight out, making what had been a two hour layover into a four hour one.

Jacob woke up at 5:30 and the first words out of his mouth were, "Ga-cob ride airplane now." Perfect. He barely had any breakfast, he was so excited. We got out of the house without a problem and to the airport. After a sad goodbye to Fraser, Jacob and I were off on our own.

The flight to Chicago, even though still long, was shorter than expected. Only three hours and fifteen minutes instead of four hours. I sound like a pansy compared to other people I know who have traveled overseas with their young children. Any amount of time over an hour is asking something of a small child. Jacob really liked his own seat. I really liked him having it too. So much more room! We read books, ate lunch, looked out at the beautiful snowy mountains (how I miss them!), coloured pictures and played with sponge puppets. He was awesome.

Once in Chicago I looked at the departures board to see if my next flight information was up yet. I saw that the original flight we had been on was on the board, "on time". I went to an agent and asked if we could get back on that one. I'd been trying to meet up with a friend in the airport and the delay would've made that a perfect plan. But having been up since four and being exhausted, I really didn't want to spend an extra two hours at this airport. Fortunately, we were able to get on the earlier flight.

Of course, now there were pickup issues. Things back in Detroit were getting complicated. My mom had gone to the doctor at the spur of a moment so coming in earlier was actually worse for anyone else to pick us up. After trying to figure out several different plans (while trying to find some food, feed and watch Jacob, give him a diaper change and go to the bathroom myself), my mom called and said that everything was okay for her to come, as originally scheduled. Feeling stressed but also relieved that we would indeed have a ride once we finally got in, we raced off to our next plane.

Jacob fell asleep within five minutes on the secon plane and slept almost all the way to Detroit. He missed a beautiful sunset up above the clouds. We were just above the clouds and circled around a few times as we got close to Detroit. The cottony landscape of the clouds stretched out as far as I could see, the distant clouds coloured pink and purple and rising up like the Rocky Mountains. Closer to us, the resemblance of the clouds to cottonballs was quite uncanny. We sailed down through them finally into a "foggy tunnel" as Jacob called it. The ground was right there and we landed within seconds.

The last fiasco of the day was the luggage which, naturally, hadn't come. I checked it at the gate when I thought I'd be in Chicago for four hours. Two hours between flights seemed like enough time to get my bags onto my own plane but apparently that hadn't worked out. Alas. I filled out my address and was told someone would deliver the bag once it arrived. Moral of the story: Don't ever pack something absolutely necessary in your checked bag. Even at this point, Jacob said, "Ga-cob love airport."

After a dark and foggy (and long) drive to my brother and his fiance's place, we finally arrived at 9pm. I was very glad to not have stayed in Chicago for the extra two hours. Jacob was all lit up, though, He was excited to my mom, let her put him in his carseat, talked and laughed at things all the way to Nick and Amy's and was running around like crazy when we got there. He gave Amy a huge hug, too. Adorable. I told him so many times how proud of him I was for all his hard work being patient and cooperative today. What a great traveler!