Vacation: Part I

Travelling across the country with an infant is every bit as fun as it looks.


We are now "those people." You know, the ones you see in the airport and think "why don't they just stay home?" The ones you HATE to be stuck behind in line. We descended upon Logan Airport with 4 suitcases, a car seat wrapped in a black trash bag, two carry-ons, and a stroller. Oh, and a baby who did not want to be in the stroller. With the help of my parents, we navigated the hour-long line to check bags and get boarding passes. (Jet Blue's computers were all down, so there was no self-check-in and they were giving out hand-written boarding passes.)

Once that hurtle was conquered, we glided through security relatively unencumbered. With the stroller folded up on the x-ray belt, I carried Tai through the metal detector, after passing up two opportunities to make breast milk jokes to the TSA folks. I can't tell you how hard it was to restrain myself when they said, "If you have any liquids for the baby you need to take them out."

This was our first time flying Jet Blue. We mostly chose them because of the insanely cheap direct flight from Boston to San Diego. But the fact that there is a mini-TV in front of each person didn't hurt either. They even have a Google Maps channel that shows you your current air speed, elevation, and location on a map of the US, so that every now and then you can flip to that station and think, "Oh god, we've only come as far as Indiana?"

We figured the TV might help keep Tai calm and quite during the flight. But he was actually not all that interested in it. He was much happier peeking between the seats at the people behind us and giggling at them. Once he fell asleep, though, I found the mini-TV very useful. Or, at least, I thought it would be useful. There I was, 37,000 feet in the air, belted into my seat with Tai sleeping deeply on my full bladder, at 9pm EST on a Thursday. Time for Grey's Anatomy. But wait, Jet Blue offers 37 channels of digital cable and not a single ABC affiliate! It was like some little-known level of hell, sitting there having to pee and knowing that Grey's was on and I was unable to tune in.

Tai was a trooper. He slept for about 1/3 of the flight and only really got stir-crazy for the last 20 minutes or so. And even though we landed in San Diego at 9pm (midnight, EST) and then had to get our bags, shuttle to the car rental place, and wait for our car for about 45 minutes, he held it together.

With the exception of potato chips on the flight, Minh and I had not eaten since about 1pm EST. originally, I thought we'd stop and get something to eat on the way to the condo, but by the time we got our rental car it was so late and Tai was so tired, that we just went straight there and went to bed. Of course, Tai woke us up at 4am the next day, ready to go. We fed him some baby food and played with him, and the proceeded to wait a very long time for restaurants to open. There was no food in the condo and the tap water tasted like dirt. It was a painful 4 hours--I almost broke down and ate a jar of baby food. Needless to say, we were waiting outside the door of a local greasy spoon when they opened at 8am.