Flying Solo

When you're a parent, you learn to come to grips with the fact that you really, truly do not know what you're doing. Before you have kids, when you are essentially responsible only for your own well being, you may feel at certain times like you have a handle on the whole actions and consequence thing. You have time to think things through until the right solution makes itself known to you.

But with kids, the sheer volume of decisions and the pace at which you have to make them overwhelms and obliterates any notion that you will always be able to make the "right" choice. Decisions, both big and small, are borne out of a mixture of instinct, research, input from other people and most important of all, whatever works in the moment.

You really have no idea what the outcomes will be; how your child will be affected. And we're all nervous that in the end we will commit the gravest sin of all--screwing our child up.

And you know what the worst part is, the jury is out on that for like, decades. We have to wait until their a least teenagers, and probably adults, before we can see the results.

But sometimes it seems that we've gotten it somewhat right. Like it's safe to pat ourselves on the back.

That's how I felt on Sunday, when for the first time ever I took my two girls on an airplane and I was the sole adult.





If I only had one word to describe it, that word would be -- smooth. Smooth is exactly the opposite of how I expected things to go. My expectation? Crazed. Because toddler plus infant plus flying machine equals nuttiness, right?

But it seems that taking Lisel with us on our road adventures has been a good thing. She's fluent in the ways of the airport whether it's checking baggage or taking her shoes off for security or making the big step from the jetway onto plane. She delights in both takeoff and landing. She's cool hanging out for couple of hours as we fly through the air.


Willow? Well she just might give Lisel a run for the "babies who travel well and are well traveled" award.




What could have been a teeth grinding exercise in travel frustration turned out to be a pleasant morning jaunt. And I felt like maybe, just maybe, Dave and I were doing an okay job.