Midwest Trip - Day One!

We just got back from a trip to the Midwest to visit the Irwin clan! Soooooo, we headed out for our 7 day excursion with a 5:30 am flight out of Fresno. Yes, I said 5:30 which meant we had to be at the airport at 4:30 and had to leave the house around 4 am which also meant I was up at 2:30 am! 

We flew into San Francisco and then onto Chicago. The day went pretty smoothly. Below is Charlotte and I on her first flight EVER. She already looked exhausted.

 Charlotte took a little nap while snuggled up to her sister. 

Makes my heart melt. Love my girls and I love that they have each other.

A few months ago after hearing about a planned family get together in Wisconsin we decided we should make the trip out. We immediately found cheap tickets in and out of Chicago so we jumped on it and decided to finalize plans later. It turned out we needed to stay with Daniel’s brother’s family in Ohio for the first leg of the trip so we purchased another ticket from Chicago to Columbus, Ohio. Unfortunately that meant we had a 5 hour layover in Chicago! Again the girls did really good. We of course had a few “moments”but the good outweighed any tough situations we encountered that day. We treated the whole experience as an adventure and Morgan loved that. We rode cars, airplanes, shuttles, buses and walked through tunnels and on escalators and elevators, etc. 

We enjoyed lots of laughs, smiles and getting to experience the excitement of the girls as they saw and experienced new things. 

We had a pretty easy day until our last flight. It was delayed. We didn't end up landing in Ohio until after 10 pm. Charlotte’s ears were bothering her on that last flight. By the time we landed and were in baggage claim Charlotte proceeded to projectile vomit (not once but twice, EVERYWHERE). I grabbed her baby blanket to try to catch as much of it as I could. Daniel told me to run to the bathroom and he’d stay behind with Morgan and grab our bags. Of course poor Charlotte started to cry. I took her to the bathroom and of course there was no changing table (this really infuriates me). I put her in the middle of the floor and started stripping off her clothes. I discovered I was down to one wipee (of course)! Luckily this bathroom had paper towels. Even her diaper was covered so I stripped that off too to try to wipe her down before putting her in a change of clothes. She then proceeded to pee all over the floor and herself. At one point she even slipped in the pee and fell. To say this was traumatic was an understatement. I felt like the worst mom ever as my poor little baby was standing there covered in pee and vomit and crying as she tugged at her ears. I kept telling myself, “you asked too much of her. You should have never expected her to get up so early, travel all day, ride on three different airplanes and get to bed so late.” I felt awful for her. I just wanted to scoop her up and take all her discomfort away. I eventually got her all wiped down and changed. Let’s just say I left the umbrella stroller and baby blanket in that baggage claim bathroom. There was no saving them. I had already clogged up two sinks just rinsing out her clothes. It was truly traumatic for everyone involved.

To pat myself on the back though, I did have a change of clothes for her and I had brought a bag for soiled clothes so I threw her destroyed outfit in that. She threw up once in Uncle Chris’ car before we took her in the house. After that she was fine though. We took her upstairs, bathed her and put that poor child to bed. At least we had arrived.