a week in spokane - part one

This past Wednesday Madeline and I gave Jeremy a big 

hug and a couple kisses and boarded a plane headed to Spokane

 (two planes actually) to surprise our families for the week.  

Madeline was a dream on the first flight.

She slept though the whole thing.
We had a short layover in Denver that involved

THREE trips to the bathroom in less than ten minutes.
I felt like such an idiot walking to the bathroom then
back to the gate then back to the bathroom, etc. 

Oh well, I thought, at least now there's no way she's got 
any poop left in her, and we'll have a diaper-change free last flight. HA! 

She slept through take off in her car seat, then woke up to eat.

There were probably forty empty seats on the flight, but of course

some lady just had to sit by us.  gah.... She was really nice, but really?!

You felt the need to sit next to the new mom who obviously would have 

appreciated an empty seat next to her because she might need a 

place to change her baby or to maybe have privacy feeding her baby?

{apparently not}

So I'm feeding her, we've probably got another hour and fifteen minutes

left on the flight and I heard my least favorite noise in the world.

It's a little squirting sound and is often accompanied by a nasty smell.

It's no coincidence we call Madeline our "little pooper"

because she is good at it. Knowing the odds of her having a 

blow out while feeding her were pretty good, 

I kept my hand circulating her bum for any sign of leakage.  

Sure enough the leakage presented itself {it never fails}.

As quickly as my little mommy brain could, I devised a plan.

By this point the lady next to me was sound asleep,

I had no choice but to wake her up.
Ignoring the illuminated 'seatbelt sign', I scurried to the
 bathroom hoping with all my might that either
(a) there would be some sort of changing table or
(b) airplane bathrooms were bigger than I remembered.
Neither of those things were true.
Luckily I had a changing cloth that I spread across the toilet seat lid.
Madeline fit on the lid diagonally, but just barely.  It was close
enough that she was uncomfortable with her head being so
close to the edge.  She's a trooper though and didn't
start screaming.  She gave me a look that said,
"It's ok, mom.  I know you wouldn't ever do something so horrible to me
unless you had to and I love you, too.  We'll get through this."
And miraculously we did. She had only leaked a little bit, and I had a
ziplock bag to put her dirty clothes in.  I think the worst part was
making the walk-of-shame from the bathroom
 to my seat with a naked baby.
"Wait a minute, didn't you go into the
 bathroom with a fully clothed baby?"
Yes.  Yes I did.

The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful.  Madeline finished eating
and continued to thrill everyone with her heart breaking smiles.
I even managed to block out the rednecks behind me after a while.
Did you know it's possible to talk about BEER for an entire flight?
Yep.  Those kind guys behind me proved it.  Beer of all things.  Come on.
Oh except for a quick five minutes when they discussed a dog that
was a cross between a beagle and a chi wa wa..... nuff said.

Jeremy called the high school where my brothers go, impersonated my dad,
and got Peter excused from school to come pick us up from the airport.
Boy were we glad to see him!  I could hardly contain my excitement
the whole way home!  It was like Christmas morning.

aaaaaaaaand you'll just have to stay tuned to hear about the rest of our trip!

kluvyoubye