North Carolina 2011, Day 1: It's raining in Atlanta, no wait, those are just tears.

waiting to board

This morning we managed to make it through airport security at 7:30 AM with 2 adults, 2 kids, 4 carry on bags, 2 kites and Brynn's 11 lip glosses/chapsticks.

Oh that's right, this one goes to 11.

11. Lip Glosses.

#heavenhelpmeinabout10years

11 various lip products, a must have for all every 6 year old traveler

We sat two and two on the flight to Atlanta. We snacked, watched movies, read, listened to music. It was all very uneventful and pleasant. Except for the kid behind me, who while darn cute, was literally kicking my seat and screaming for at least 3 hours of the flight. Thank goodness for Bose noise canceling headphones. We may have secretly been filming commercial for those headphones, I'm not sure.

It seems like every time we set foot in Atlanta someone falls apart. This time it was Brynn. Over lunch she laid her head on the table and wailed about having to share the banana, even though she said it was too big for her to eat and she wanted to share it. She dragged her bag. She threw herself on the ground. She practiced her ballet "form." She leaned over the chairs and bounced around. She spent about 15 minutes like this:

And then she lost her little mind. She cried and cried and cried and she didn't stop until we were on the plane and she fell asleep.



And then I fell asleep. And then Chad fell asleep. We were talking over dinner about how we all had a nice nap on the plane. "Not me," said Grace. "I was awake, just sitting there trying to decide what to do if we landed and you were all still asleep. I would have no idea what to do!"

We deplaned in Norfolk, where we admired the tealish Mermaid carpet and the grammatically incorrect restroom signs I love so much. (i.e. Women is already plural, no? As is Men. But all the signs say womens and mens. No apostrophes. Norfolkians are not big on punctuation apparently.)

I realized as I watched 2 of our 4 bags circle the carousel about 3 times that Chad has no idea what most of our luggage looks like. Nor does Grace who asked me why so many suitcases are black and could we get purple ones?

We got the car and as we were climbing in hear Brynn say "Cool! No booster seat!" And we looked at each other - crap. In the rush of the morning, neither of us grabbed Brynn's booster seat out of the car. "She'll be fine," says Chad. Nope. No booster seat is no bueno, so I made Chad drive me to the closet Target, which according to Yelp is 1.2 miles from the airport. Where I proceeded to buy a booster seat and all is bueno again.

We ate dinner. I gave Brynn a good dose of Tylenol as she was starting to slip into a crying haze again. There were a lot of "Iwannagohomes" over dinner. Tylenol seemed to snap her out of it. We checked into the hotel, had a great swim in the pool and are Grace and Brynn currently learning to fall asleep in the same bed (they have to share this week). If tonight is an indication, that should last all of about 6 minutes, but we'll see.

I'm excited for this week. I'm excited to chill and be totally focused on, well, nothing. And I'm excited for this time with the kids. Grace is looking so grown up. Compared to the 2 year old having an epic tantrum at 36K feet, she seemed so lovely and poised and calm. She was swimming laps tonight putting her new found swimming skills to use and looking so tall and gorgeous.

Brynn is a riot. I wish I could videotape every minute of her right now. I want to remember everything. Her explaining every detail she saw out the window of the airplane or bobbing up and down in the light of the pool tonight, holding her foot, head under the water, using her goggles to inspect her freshly painted toenails. "They look so beautiful under water, Mom."

I love that she loves every minute of being alive...

... except of course those minutes spent in the Atlanta airport. But who can blame her really? That place is like hell, just slightly less crowded.