Grounded

I am constantly amazed at the ways that I am tested as a mother. Motherhood has been and always will be a learning experience, and yesterday continues to prove that.

Avery and I traveled to Atlanta on Monday for a conference that Coca-Cola was generous enough to invite me out to (more on that later.) I wanted to bring Avery with me because I am still exclusively nursing her and my mom was driving up to spend time with her while I was at the conference. It was a win/win situation.

Our flight home yesterday afternoon was scheduled for shortly after the conference ended, so my mom dropped us off at the airport and we quickly said our goodbyes so that I could make our way through security and to our gate. Traveling with a baby always makes it a little bit more difficult, so I like to leave a little bit more time for me to be able to do all of the “extra” stuff that they require.

I was so looking forward to getting home to see Harlan and MacKay. Although we were only gone two days, it seemed like so much longer than that and I was really missing my family.

Shortly after boarding the plane, the pilots informed us that we were delayed for about 15 minutes because of bad weather in New York. It didn’t bother me at first because I had just started to nurse Avery for take off and she was slowly drifting into sleep. As that 15 minutes went by the pilot comes back on and informs us that we all need to get off the flight because we are delayed three hours and they wanted us to be comfortable outside of the airplane rather than squished inside (how nice of them.) The pilot had such great timing that he made the announcement  just as Avery had fallen asleep.

I gathered up all of my stuff, woke Avery up  and made my way off of the airplane. I waited right outside the airplane doors for them to bring up my stroller so that I didn’t have to carry Avery around for the next three hours. As we were waiting, the flight attendant comes up and says that there is a new take off time in an hour and that we all need to get back on the plane (yay!)

Soon after taking my seat and settling back in, I realized that we weren’t leaving at their new projected time and we were still being delayed for a long time. We were going on two hours of sitting on the plane at this point and I was getting restless and so was Avery. That’s when I had to pull out my creative mom skills and try to entertain my 5 1/2 month old daughter that wasn’t happy with just sitting on my lap.

We laughed, we played, we made some friends, but ultimately we waited.

And waited.

And waited.

We waited over four hours on that plane.

They piled everyone back on around hour two and didn’t let anyone get back off. First class was getting royal service and we were served warm water. I had to beg them to get Avery’s car seat from under the plane because it was getting nearly impossible for me to hold her that long and she was getting SO tired (it was way past her bedtime.)

Luckily a little over four hours after getting on the plane, we were ready to take off and head back to NYC. Avery spent the flight home sleeping.

I rewarded myself for such a hard afternoon with a glass of cheap airline wine.

And at that point in time, it was the best wine I had ever tasted.

After nearly seven hours on a plane that day, I was exhausted, crazy, and just plain cranky. Avery woke back up as we were getting our bags and felt just about the same way I did.

And then I woke up to these people this morning and all was right in my world again.

I’m chronicling my adventures on Babble.com! Check out some of my Babble posts at Baby’s First Year.