Wade & Tate's Little Adventure

Kelly, Tate and I drove down to San Antonio this past weekend to visit some friends who just had a baby. Since Kelly wanted some “Kelly time” with her old college roommate and baby Campbell, Tate and I hopped on plane back to D/FW on Saturday.

OK, so did you get that? Tate and I hopped on a plane . . . by ourselves . . . just him and me . . . no Kelly . . . no help . . . no supervising adults . . . no problem!

So here are a few observations of our 45-minute excursion at 25,000 feet.

1. You can get through security a whole lot faster when you’re a single parent with a child. Apparently TSA agents are suckers for blond-haired, blue-eyed, nearly 2-year olds who make an effort to show everyone his Hot Wheels car.

(I’m not sure if that’s supposed to make me feel better or worse about homeland security!)

2. Unfortunately the single-parent-with-child doesn’t get you squat at the food court. All I wanted to do was to purchase a cup of fruit yogurt. But after 4 minutes of standing at the cash register while waiting for the guy whose name tag simply said “trainee” to figure out how to run my credit card I caught myself actually wondering how bad it could be if Tate didn’t get a snack before getting on the plane. I never found out because “trainee” eventually figured it out.

(And yes, it was 4 minutes! You tend to notice how long things take when you're carrying two bags and restless child!)

3. At home, we’ll use videos from time to time when we need to occupy Tate for a few minutes. But apparently all we have to do is park a MD-80 in our backyard and he’ll stay glued to the window for hours.


4. There’s nothing better when you’re flying alone with a 22-month old when the lady at the gate informs you that there are only 30 people on your flight and you’ll have the entire aisle to yourself!

(Kudos to Kelly for booking us on this flight!)

5. There’s no doubt left in your mind on whether your 22-month old understands that he’s flying in an airplane when he starts yelling, “Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!” during take-off so loud that the pilot can hear him!

6. Thank the Lord in Heaven for portable DVD players!


7. The Evil Empire isn’t doing you any favors (and they rarely do!) when they make you stow away all your toys, books, and games prior to landing and then make you sit on the tarmac for 15 minutes with nothing to distract your child while you wait for some other plane to pull away from your gate. Have you ever tried to make the booklet explaining the emergency exits sound exciting to your child?

“And look, Tate! After we crash land in the ocean, we get to use our seat cushions as floatation devices until help arrives!”

It was a great little adventure for the two of us! Tate obviously won’t remember it, but it’ll go down as one of my favorites!