Flying, Airports, and Children

What can I say about the flight .. it was long. We arrived at the airport with plenty of time to spare. Security there was not too difficult. I did forget to take Butterfly's juice out of my carry on which caused them to do an extra check on that but it was not a huge deal. Had dinner at a restaurant there and then went to our gate. Without too much drama we were able to find out what to do with the stroller we planned to gate check. Then we were on the plane and settled. The Butterfly began with "are we moving yet?" and "are we there yet?" Other than this she watched Disney shows on the plane tv which each lasted 22 minutes and I had to start a new show for her each time. When the plane descended this caused Butterfly a lot of ear pain. She screamed quite a bit. This was NOT fun.

Next we had to get through Immigration and security in Amsterdam. Immigration was quite easy. The agent looked at passports and compared our pics to us and stamped our books and that was it. Security was not so easy. Again we had the issues with Butterfly's juice. Eventually it was allowed but I would like to try and find something smaller here because they said it was actually illegal. Then Goobie-kins has walked off. Very scary when you are in a country where they mostly speak a language that you do not understand. One more flight, much shorter than the first, but again the screaming upon descent.

All this time poor Butterfly did not go to the bathroom. She pretty much refuses to do this when away from home. We were stuck in traffic going to my in-laws home from the airport and she really had to go and started to cry. I had her in a pull up and thought it would be ok to just go, so I told her that it would be ok if she could not make it home, but as it turned out, she soaked everything.

Once "home", we had a small fika. To learn more about fika, see this post from our last trip to Sweden. http://chaosismyreality.blogspot.se/2008/08/swedish-tradistions-krftskiva-and-fika.html After fika, I went to sleep for 11 hours. This actually helped immensely with handling the time difference.

So this is how our vacation has started .. it has to get better from there, right?