Old News

This is from this past Christmas:

Entering the states...Customs in Chicago...A man turns to me: "I sat behind you and your two kids (Dylan and Mackenzie) for the (9 hour) flight and I couldn't believe what great travelers they were." Knock on wood and cross my fingers. My children are hardened travelers, although not by their own choice. Any parent can see the nervous looks on the other passengers within a radius of 4 seats/rows when you enter a plane with 3 kids aged 7 and under (Taylor turned 8 after we returned to Belgium). However, 9 hours later, somewhere over Lake Michigan, those same people are amazed that they saw/heard a grand total of 10 meltdown minutes (the 3 year old, of course). They could care less if the children rioted for the last 20 minutes of the flight at that point. People are nearly screaming with joy because they didn't have to hear crying, whining kids for 4000 miles.

On the return trip from the States I flew alone with the 3 children. We had the 3 seats in the middle of the plane and one seat across the row. Rather than leave one kid alone I chose to have them together with me obviously very close by. Many hours later, shortly after the pilot told us to prepare for landing, a flight attendant from a different part of the aircraft came to the kids and said, "who's with these children?" After raising my hand she spoke down her nose at me: "Children must have an adult seated with them." Had she told us this before takeoff, or had the children been screaming the whole flight, people around us might have agreed. But after 8 hours with hardly a peep from three kids the people nearby gave me a few sympathetic head shakes and an eye roll or two at the idiocy of this woman's timing.