Home Again, Home Again, Jiggity Jig

Just a follow up to yesterday's post. Everything went beautifully, seriously just perfect on the plane. My mom was able to accompany me through security after getting special permission (gotta love small-town airports), so that meant less fumbling to get shoes on and laptops back into backpacks with a baby in tow. This also gave me a chance to get organized before boarding. This is random, but my mom and I now always have these weird tearful goodbyes, which NEVER happened before. My emotional incontinence is catching, I think.

The plane was overbooked, so there were no empty seats this time. My seat-mate was a super tall, middle-aged, stoic-sort of man from northern Minnesota and he was nothing but nice to us. He smiled at Bella and said he didn't mind if she rested her feet on his lap while she slept, let her feel his jacket a million times, offered to let me put my complimentary 6 oz of diet coke on his tray table and was just great in general. She didn't cry at all. AT ALL! Just played happily for the first 20 minutes and then conked out before the beverage service even came around. After sleeping for an hour she woke up and was wiggly, but content for the rest of the flight. She even said "bye-bye" to people as they left the plane. (Fluke? Is she speaking? We can't tell. Either way, it inspired several passengers - including young-ish men- to say "bye-bye" back to her.) This last flight, which was much like all her other plane rides, helps to erase the memories of the hellacious one earlier this week.

The taxi ride wasn't so hot, but I'm not going to complain too much (but of course I have to complain a little, no?). The taxi driver was incredibly inpatient about letting me install the car seat. He kept saying she would be fine if I just held the seat in place while he drove. (WTF?) I said, "No, it needs to be installed. This will just take a minute". Then when the seatbelt wouldn't click (it was an old, gross taxi), he again said just to hold the seat in place and she would be fine. NO, DUDE! After the seat belt clicked and the seat was installed, I tested it to see how secure it was and it was super loose. So I went to readjust it and he once more said, "She's fine, she's fine. Let's go." I don't use this word often, but here it is: what a fucker. Give me 5 minutes to install the car seat. For the rest of the car ride he blabbed on about all sorts of ridiculous things including the fact that he was wearing 3-D glasses that he bought in the "As Seen on TV" section of Walgreens and they made everything look super sunny and he could still see things pretty well with them on. As he told me this, he pointed at his normal glasses that were hooked into the sun visor. Great, dude. You are wearing trippy 3-D glasses instead of your normal glasses and you are driving me and my precious baby cargo? He also blathered on about a lot of other dumb things, never once noticing my lack of interest or effort to respond more than "mm" or "yeah". So there's my complaining.

I am glad to be home, but I'm incredibly exhausted from the stress of traveling and Bella sleeping poorly while in Montana. Husband is still out of town until Saturday, so I need to keep chugging along until our wee family is reunited once more. Speaking of being exhausted - Bella is down for her nap so I best be taking advantage of this time to catch a little rest myself since we have her 9 month appointment early this afternoon. I'm so curious to find out her current stats! Is she finally on the growth chart for weight or is she still hanging out about the 99th percentile? I'll let you know later today (not that most of you care about that sort of thing, but once a sharer, always a sharer).