My only parenting standard at airports is "don't lose her".

My only parenting standard at airports is “don’t lose her”.

My little family of three took a trip to Rio de Janeiro this weekend.  Our nephew recently had a birthday and we needed to put in some face time with my husband’s family.  It’s only a 45 minute flight from Vitoria to Rio, but that was long enough to learn a valuable lesson.  There is no length of time short enough a three year old can’t turn it into forever.

It’s like in Interstellar.  For the pilot and crew who have tasks to complete, 45 minutes is barely enough time to toss bags of crackers at everyone.  They’re the lucky ones down on the planet.  The parents of small children are the ones stuck in orbit who stumble off the plane with more grey hair and beards, demanding to know what year it is.  How long were we up there?  Six years?  Ten?

For our flight home, boarding was scheduled for 6:50pm.  Right at dinner time! But my husband and I were prepared.  We had packed sandwiches…which my daughter ultimately refused to eat because we miscalculated the nap.

The ride to the airport was about 30 minutes.  When my daughter fell asleep in the taxi, we thought “Oh good, she can take a short nap and be in a better mood.”  Only, she didn’t fall into nap-time sleep.  She fell into bedtime-for-the-night sleep, and as my grandmother says, “You don’t need to step on a snake to know it’s going to bite you.”  The same principle applies.  You don’t need to wake a preschooler up from deep sleep to know it’s going to cry.

And cry she did.  Through the whole check-in process.  While we searched for a place to sit.  While I bought water and snacks.  Even after we resorted to the emergency M&Ms.  Eventually, she calmed down and filled her stomach with 2 tiny bites of sandwich and 5 pão de queijo.

No longer hungry but still exhausted from the weekend, her emotional pendulum swung to the other extreme. We then had a deliriously giddy 3 year old on our hands.  While deliriously-giddy child is less emotionally exhausting than inconsolable child, she is more physically exhausting because deliriously-giddy child cannot occupy the same space for more than 3 seconds.

Did I mention that my back locked up this weekend?  It happened while checking in at the airport for our flight to Rio.  For the first time in my life.  I couldn’t bend over, lift anything, or even take a deep breath the entire weekend.

Because I was benched from parenting due to injury, my husband was the one running after her while I kept our place in all the various lines.  He was the one who chased her through security, from the gate to the plane, and took her on the bathroom run she needed the moment we stepped on the plane.

Eventually the plane took off and everything was ok. For about half an hour.

With fifteen minutes of flight time left, my daughter decided she could no longer tolerate her seat belt.  My husband and I desperately tried to head off the fit we could see coming.  She was straining and arching her back against the seat belt.  Her face was scrunched and turning red.  She stopped speaking in sentences and devolved to “No seat belt!”  Very aware of the 150 people trapped on the plane with us, I grabbed a doll and made it sing “Let It Go”.  As we got to the chorus, my daughter joined in and shrieked “Let it poopy! Let it poopy!”  She dissolved into a fit of laughter and proceeded to sing at the top of her lungs different versions of the song featuring everything from pee pee to smelly socks to farts.

I’m certain if there had been a vote, the other passengers would have unanimously voted us off the plane.

That was the emotional knife edge we balanced on for the remainder of the flight.  We teetered between a breakdown over the seat belt and belting out classic Disney songs rewritten to feature bodily functions. “Let it fart! Let it poopy! Let it poopy and faaaaart!” The plane eventually landed three months later, and we made it home where my daughter finally ate a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and went to bed.

All in all, it was a pretty uneventful trip.  It could have been so much worse.