I Hate You, Southwest

Southwest, oh how I hate you.

I am a planner. For the most part.

But when it comes to my children, the planning really kicks in. Sometimes annoyingly so.

So when planning to go to my parents’ house for Christmas, I thought I had it down to a tee. Well, I did have it down to a tee but sometimes things are just out of my hands.

I booked our flight so that we could leave for the airport right after nap time, have dinner in the airport, play Ipad games and do some coloring while on the plane, take a short snooze on the drive to my parents’ house and then tuck the kiddos in bed pretty darn close to their normal bedtime.

Easy peasy.

Piece of cake.

A day well-planned, I’d say.

Weeeeeeeeeeeeeell.

That all started to go down hill when Southwest started calling every half hour on Wednesday afternoon with an updated flight schedule informing me that our flight was delayed.

And delayed again.

And delayed some more.

The flight that was originally supposed to leave at 5:30 pm was now leaving at 8:40 pm. Over an hour and a half past my kiddos’ bedtime. I could feel my blood pressure start to rise.

But, we made it work.

We kicked the security check-point’s ass going through the line like a well-oiled machine, even being ever-so-patient as they tested each and every one of my breastmilk bags. And I tried my best not to give them any inpatient you-must-not-have-kids-therefore-not-understanding-how-annoying-this-is looks. I think we also had about eight little bins with our crap in it to go through the scanner, too.

To kill time we did a little exploring…

We had ourselves a little dinner. And I even brought Cal’s bottle warmer, which came in handy as I pretty much crawled under someone’s table to find an outlet so that I could feed him.

We did a little browsing. And then close to the time we were supposed to board the plane I nestled baby Cal in his carseat, turned on the sound machine, put a blanket over the top, walked him around and crossed my fingers.

We boarded the plane and Gwyn chose her seat, right across from our row with Cal’s carseat by the window, me in the middle and The Hubby in the aisle. I had planned on having The Hubby switch with her before we took off, but the people next to her were so nice and she was just adoring them, so we let her stay. Gwyn copied everything they did, including gathering the proper reading material for the flight.

And Cal was being awesome, just falling perfectly asleep as I rocked his carseat back and forth.

Then things started to go downhill a little bit. Not with our kids, surprisingly, but with our Southwest experience, which did not start off good to begin with.

As the plane started to move, Gwyn undid her seatbelt. So, The Hubby undid his so he could strap her back in.

This is when the stewardess came frantically barreling down the aisle in her Santa apron yelling at The Hubby to put his seatbelt back on.

He tried to motion that he was helping his daughter, but she would have none of it.

She continued to publicly scorned my Hubby and boy did that get my juices flowing. Now, I understand that safety comes first, but COME on. There were a lot of things I wanted to say to that Ho Ho Hoebag but refrained from doing so.

The flight, though, went perfectly. Gwyn read magazines, played on the Ipad, did some coloring, and Cal…slept.

When the plane finally landed The Hubby and I were pretty exhausted and were glad to be on the ground.

That is, until the announcement was made that the plane was waiting for a gate to open up and we had to wait.

So we waited. And waited. And the plane became stuffy. And then of course Cal woke up sweaty as ever and not very happy. The Hubby tried his best to rock him back to sleep, but of course he wanted his Mama.

After about thirty or so minutes of waiting, we were finally released around 10:15pm.

Once in baggage claim we retrieved our plethora of luggage only to discover that our bags were wet. Not just a sprinkling of water here and there, but damp. Somewhere along the way they sat in the rain. Or were dumped in a puddle. I have no idea. But we were too tired to care.

We finally made it home around 11:15 pm, got the kids nestled in bed and went to put on our jammies. Well, that was a no-go since our bags were so wet that it soaked through to our clothing.

Had it been earlier in the evening I probably would have been on the phone with someone about this, but I just didn’t have it in me.

Beyond exhausted, we threw our things in the dryer and went to bed in whatever randoms we could find.

Thus, I have concluded that if bags didn’t fly free, I probably would never fly you again, Southwest.

AND, to top it all off, Baby Cal had a temperature that next morning that was not going down, so I spent the day taking care of my poor, sick baby before taking him to the ER where his temperature peaked at 103.5 while we spent a good three and a half hours in the waiting room.

We fly back today and I can only pray that things go a little more smoothly. Keep your fingers crossed.

Please.

Like, really. Do it. I need it.

Thanks.