Travel! Toddler! Noooooooo!

This saga begins not today, but on Saturday. When Toddlerific woke us from a dead sleep to begin barfing. And proceeded to barf her way through all of Sunday (keeping down exactly NOTHING). And Monday.

Which would all have been fine and dandy (ok, well, not QUITE fine and dandy, but not nearly the pain in the ass it was) if we weren't expecting my dad to come in on Monday, spend the night, and then accompany us to his house in Hawaii.

Toddlerific has even in the best of circumstances been quite the clingy little child. I mean, you hear about these children, the ones that won't let parents go to the bathroom. She was totally one of them. So yes, barfing, clingling, miserable toddler. Trying to pack. Trying to clean (oh the laundry and floor-scrubbing that a barfing, clinging, miserable toddler can produce!). Not the happiest combination in the world.

We enter into Monday with the unhappiness-and-unsunshine that was sick-Toddlerific, and we add to this the fact that my dad doesn't get on his first flight (standby), nor his second, nor his third, and we are now discussing our "options", and THEN he finally gets on a flight only to have it significantly delayed...oh, was it ever a FUN day.

At last, Toddlerific slept, Papa (my dad) arrived, I packed, Fran washed dishes, we turned in at midnight. Woke up at 5, ate a hearty breakfast, left the house right on time, got to Portland right on time, got on the airplane.

Toddlerific is clingy and saddish but survives to this point just fine.

We were stuck (Toddlerific and I) on a window seat, penned in by an elderly handicapped woman (she couldn't get up!) and her daughter. For the entire flight. I could barely shift my weight, forget fucking walking the aisles.

~L~, I love ya, if it weren't for Little Bear on the DVD player, you might, if they let people blog from prison nowadays, be reading about the misadventures of someone taken down by in-flight security. Because I would have gone nuts. Cry a little, nurse a little, cry a little, wiggle a lot, cry a little, wail about not being allowed down, try to climb the seat in front of us, stare greedily at neighbor-lady's muffin, throw toy at neighbor-lady...oh, it was FUN. Not.

We made it, but it was a close thing. We are at my parents' house in Hawaii.

There is nothing quite so interesting as coming home after being away for so long. The house SMELLS so familiar. In a good way. Because my parents' house is largely scented by the lovely plumeria trees that divide their property from the neighbors'. The breeze flowed through like some large fresh-air bearing river (20mph average...it isn't the 'light lovely tropical breeze here in the upper valley). And it was HOME. As if she understood this concept, Toddlerific began exploring immediately (something she, well, never does), the big kids quickly found places for their things and rediscovered the pool, and we had ARRIVED.