10 pics of time adjustment {& flying with kids tips}

It was asked…on Friday’s post why I did not have my father-in-law take the photo of us sitting in front of the surfboards. I had the angle and everything set up before he came over. For him to take the photo I set up for he would have had to lay on the ground. I didn’t want to ask him to do that. I could have done the normal angle of him standing up and looking down at us or us standing…but then that would not have been the picture I wanted!

There are some things in life you can prepare for and some you cannot. When we boarded the plane to Hawaii I had 2 kid backpacks full of snacks, games, activities and fully loaded iphones (from a friend). I also had my backpack filled to the brim with more food and changes of clothes. I was prepared. We left early in the morning after everyone got a full night’s sleep. The 8 hour flight was long, but not horrible. In fact when we landed several people stopped us to say how great our kids were and how many of them did not even realize there were 3 little boys on the plane. MIRACLE. They saw FireCracker a lot, but didn’t hear her too much. The saving grace on the flight over was well rested kids prior to boarding and an iphone for each boy loaded with movies and games. Thanks Jeremy! FireCracker took one 30 minute nap the whole time, none of the boys slept. Yuck.

We landed and forced everyone to adopt the new time zone as if it was our old one. There is 5 hour time difference….so when we landed at 7pm Hawaii time, it was really midnight our time. That was rough. The next day 3 of our 4 kids were pretty much adjusted…since they didn’t sleep a wink on the plane that helped. One of our four kids had a very rough start to the trip.

And then he got rest and my enjoyable to be around son returned. He takes after his mommy….I’m pretty grumpy with no sleep too.

Eventually our trip came to an end and we had to return home. We had a late afternoon flight which meant our youngest 2 did not get naps before boarding the plane. Bad Move. The day before we left I realized FireCracker was cutting all 4 molars and one more top tooth. PANIC. So, the flight home wasn’t great. It wasn’t good. It wasn’t bad. It was horrible. If we could have let FireCracker cry just for 10 minutes she would have fallen asleep, but you can’t let a baby cry on a confined plane. I did let her cry once…we cried together in the airplane bathroom at 2:35am. I sat back down, looked at Chris and said, “We aren’t doing this again until she is at least 3.”

Then we landed at 5am for a 3 hour layover. All of our kids had slept about 2 hours in the last 24 hours. The gate attendant liked kids and joyfully gave our sleep deprived children balloons to play with. Great. 4 kids. No sleep. Balloon volleyball in the airport terminal. Lots of fighting. Lots of whining. Lots of thrilled passengers nearby (which I think 2 might read this blog….2 ladies traveling with a little girl?). We relocated to an empty terminal. I hadn’t got ANY sleep in over 24 hours at that point. Did I mention I am not fun to be around when I don’t get sleep?

So here are just a few travel tips from me:

1. Take a late afternoon or evening flight with young kids. Getting a full night’s rest before the flight is more guaranteed than sleeping on the plane.

2. Pack lots and lots of food.

3. Pack cups with lids, so your kids can have drinks from the attendants but not in the short cups they hand out.

4. Bendaroos – thanks Cindy & Angie

5. ipods & iphones filled with movies and apps (below is a list of apps my kids liked)

6. When you arrive at the hotel and the front desk gives each of your kids an inflatable beach ball. Don’t inflate them. Boys + beach balls + small quarters = yelling, even if you aren’t a yeller.

7. Read the comments from this post….tons of great ideas we used. Thanks!

The names of apps for kids our 1 & 2 year olds liked, you’ll have to search the apps store:

Bab bab lite

Baby Lite

Baby Piano

Look Baby!

Baby Flash Cards

AnimalMatch

Match-a-Roo Zoo

AniMatch

Colors