And we’re off. With any luck, Tuesday will be the last time I’ll ever have to wake up a toddler at 4 am.
Checking in for the flight was average difficulty for an international ticket with a baby-in-arms on it. That is, it took 45 minutes, three ticket agents, two separate managers, and calls to both United Airlines and Lufthansa headquarters. We had a similar experience checking Mimi in for Viet Nam, but I knew this would be even more complicated, since Quinn wasn’t even alive when I made the reservation for the rest of the family.
When we finally got our boarding passes, we hugged Grandpa, and tried to convince him one last time to come with us (conveniently, he was actually leaving for a work trip that morning). Those two road warriors were inseparable.
At the exact mid-point of airport security, right after sending my first bag down the conveyor belt, I realized that I forgot to give my dad the car keys (he was in the other terminal). I turned quite a few TSA heads with my sudden expletive. But I was able to pop back through security to meet my dad and make his drive home much less complicated.
I took Mimi for a run around the terminal after I made it back through security. Our eventual goal was to get a cup of coffee for Aimee and I. We were feeling pretty good, but we knew we were going to need the caffeine.
After our walk, Aimee informed me that—not an hour after leaving the house—Quinn had his first blowout of the trip. Aimee turned quite a few TSA heads with her sudden expletive.
But that was about all the excitement for the first leg of the journey. After the Tucson flight, we had a three hour layover in Denver, where Mimi identified moving walkways as the breakaway hit toy of the trip.
They grow up so fast.
But our journey wasn’t quite as smooth on the next leg. In fact, I can specifically remember the turning point. It was around 7pm, somewhere over the North Atlantic, between Denver and Munich. I turned to Aimee and said, “This is painless. This trip is going really well” I actually said that out loud. I can’t believe I did that.
At that exact moment, Mimi’s eyes turned a fiery red, and we knew we had entered the Bermuda Triangle of toddler parenthood: the over-tired zone.
Now, let me start by acknowledging that toddlers are not rational creatures at baseline. They can run from you at Mach 7 in the grocery store, but God forbid you abandon them and cause irreparable attachment issues by trying to sneak out of their bedroom after reading just five separate bedtime stories.
And that’s when they’re well rested. On this flight, Mimi was not well rested. By the time dinner was served and the cabin lights were dimmed, we were already at least 4-5 hours past Mimi’s bed time. Very dangerous territory.
Not ten seconds after coming back from our 35th potty run, Mimi announced to the entire middle section of the Airbus A350 that we were grossly negligent parents. Suddenly out of nowhere, gallon sized tears started running down her face as she exclaimed. “POTTTTTTYYYY!!! MIMI POTTTTTYYYYY!!! POOOOO POOOOOOOOOOO!!!”
Knowing better, I tried to reason with her. That was dumb. She didn’t care that there was an inverse Lufthansa logo on her back from sitting on the toilet so many times. She didn’t care that no fewer than ten people were audibly snoring around us. Well, they were. She didn’t care that it was way past her bed time, and she would feel so much better if she’d just close her eyes.
So we spent the next 90 minutes making non-stop potty runs, with the tears for the next one starting to fall before we make it back to our seats from the last. Knowing that she was in complete control of the situation, she looked me in the eye and exclaimed, “All done!” As soon as she hit the seat.
Of course, the people around us were just as tired as we were, and were probably all thinking that we should just let that kid go potty already. And to their credit, we didn’t get any bad looks or snide comments.
Aimee and I realized long ago that air travelers either get it or they don’t when it comes to crying children. No one wants that kid on the plane to stop crying more than the parent. No one. And making the parents feel bad just makes things worse. Thankfully, we were on a flight full of people that got it. Or they could tell that I was one half-second of extra eye contact away from totally losing my mind, so they kept their heads down. Either way, I appreciated it.
After nearly two hours of cyclical potty breakdowns, Mimi finally started to close her eyes. And not a moment too soon. I had exhausted every possible parenting trick, including asking Aimee to pass me Quinn’s pacifier so I could give it to Mimi. Thankfully, Aimee was in a much better state of mind than I was, retained the pacifier, and we agreed never to speak of that again.
I was desperate, but finally making some progress. Until the overhead speaker came on.
A flight attendant with more than a touch of panic in her voice announced that a passenger was having a serious medical emergency, and asked for any medical personnel to press their call button.
Yes, at that very moment. This is a true story.
A flood of emotions came running through me. Like any reasonable person, the first thought (or at least in the top three) was, “I hope that person’s ok.” Also running through my mind was my not-so-secret desire to respond to an in-flight medical emergency. The other thought was, “Are you F’ing kidding me?!” Four years of college, four years of medical school, three years of residency preparing me for this moment. And when it comes, there’s a toddler in full-meltdown splayed out across my lap.
But the decision was easy. Of course I was going to respond. In my not-infrequent daydreams of this moment, I reach up, press the button, do my stern-face doctor walk down the aisle, and save a life. It did not go quite as smoothly in reality.
On modern planes, there is no call button. There’s just an LCD touch screen on the seat in front of you that comes alive with the brightness of a mining-truck headlamp every time you touch it. Once my vision returned after the fire on my retina subsided, it probably took me another three minutes to figure out what screen the call button was on. No, I’m not interested in the time to destination. No, not Avengers: Infinity War. No, I do not want to place a long-distance phone call. Seeing me struggle like this was the first electronic device I’d used since the invention of the rotary phone, Aimee suggested that I just walk over to the situation. Judging by the flashlights and flurry of activity, it was only a few rows ahead of us. Good idea, Aimee.
But when I tried to put Mimi down, her potty-cries reactivated. My eyes and attention darted between the mega-watt touch screen, my crying toddler, and whatever was happening in the rows in front of us. And when I tried to pass Mimi to Aimee, Mimi bumped Quinn, so now he was crying, too.
Relaxing vacation. This is supposed to be a relaxing vacation.
Finally, at Aimee’s encouragement, I ended up just tossing Mimi over my shoulder and walking up the aisle. But by this point, no fewer than a dozen doctors were gathered around the person. It looked like the 19th hole on a Wednesday afternoon. The gathering crowd was clearly causing more harm than good, so I told the flight attendant that I’m a doctor and I’m sitting in row 29 if they need more help.
I went back to my seat, and wondered what country we’d be exploring for the next three weeks if our plane got diverted, because there was no way I was getting on another one anytime soon.
Thankfully, the person was fine. He just got a little light-headed, but was already starting to feel better by the time Mimi and I came lumbering over to save the day.
But all the excitement finally wore Mimi out. Aimee took a turn at toddler wrangling, and was able to get Mimi into her seat without waking her up. An unknown amount of time later, we woke up to breakfast being served, and landed in Munich without any further excitement.
Our layover in Munich was 5 hours long. Yes, it was brutal. There was at least a little kids play area where Mimi made friends with a fellow traveling toddler of similar mental state. And there’s no language or cultural divide that can’t be bridged by the shared experience of raising a toddler. To that set of parents from some unknown country, I understand and appreciate you.
But the real highlight for Mimi was continuing to visit the bathroom a hundred times (I hope it’s more of a developmental phase than a urine infection). Her favorite part seemed to be offering a play by play to the strangers in the stalls next me. “Dada pooping.” “Dada need need toilet paper?” Thanks, Mimi.
Our Munich to Athens flight was uneventful. Or at least it seemed to be. All four of us were asleep before take off.
We already cleared immigration in Munich, since that was our first EU entry point, so making our way through the Athens airport was a breeze. Our only decision was to take a 90 minute metro trip or a 30 minute taxi trip to our apartment. After 24 hours of traveling, take my money, Mr. taxi driver.
Around 8pm, our driver dropped us off in front of an alleyway, and said in broken English, “Right through there, no cars allowed.” As we walked down the dark alley with our luggage and two small children, I made a half-hearted attempt to convince Aimee (and myself) that this was totally normal, and we weren’t about to get mugged. My sales pitch wasn’t helped by the fact that the apartment we had rented was locked up, lights off, with no one responding to our knocking,
Now, call me old fashioned, but I actually tend to prefer hotels over online apartment rentals, and this is precisely why. I like access to 24 hour staff, I like central locations, and I like knowing that, more likely than not, the room is safe and secure. But when traveling long distances with short children, a two-room apartment goes a long way towards maintaining sanity. Of course, as we stood there on the empty street, I questioned my decision while I internally repeated the famous last words, “The reviews online were so good!”
Exhausted and exasperated, we walked to a nearby cafe. I asked the server if I could use their phone to call the number I was given when I made the reservation (foreign pay phones continue to intimidate and confuse me). Thankfully, the jovial Dimitris that I had emailed with when I made the reservation picked up the phone and profusely apologized for not hearing us knock. We were going to make it!
We heard someone unlocking the front door of the apartment building, and Aimee said, “I really hope this is Dimitris.” With the very clear subtext that if it wasn’t, she was going to take the kids and find a Holiday Inn. (She had recently informed me that Quinn’s third blowout of the trip was seeping through her shirt.)
But thankfully, it was Dimitris, and I’m still married. After getting settled, we hosed down the kids, and all of us melted into our beds. It’s good to be here.
