Our Boarding Experience

It wasn’t so funny when it happened, but it is worth documenting, the kids will enjoy this horrific story some day. It involves throw up and diapers, so if you decide to read on, you have been warned.

A little background: Zachery has been known to gag and throw up is food on a regular basis. If he doesn’t like something, he gags until he up chucks everything in his stomach just to get the awful tasting food out of his mouth. So any time we try something new, I try to offer him the new food first before giving him his full meal. If he is full and we try to give him more food, he will gag on it as well and loose everything. It is his way of saying, “hey look mom, I am full” or “I am just not interesting in eating, stop trying to feed me.” It isn’t a nice way to express oneself, but hey, what can you do when you can’t talk?

We have had far too many of these occasions, you’d think we’d learn a little and not try to feed him anything new while out in public.

Recent Episode 1: At the memory service for my Grandfather there was a luncheon afterwards. I took the kids to get them some lunch before the chapel emptied out and the tables became full. RJ stayed behind with Jared to help straighten up the chapel. My parents were in the greeting line with my Grandmother. My sister helped get a plate for Savannah while I feed Zachery. I apparently gave him something he didn’t like because he lost it. All over my dress! We were approximately 45 minutes from my parent’s house. Luckily there was a nice lady there who apparently knew me as a young child and she helped cleaned up the mess. Margaret took care of Savannah while I tired to ask my cousin for some advice since she lived in the area. She was clueless at what to do and the sight of me covered in my son’s throw up probably scared her from motherhood. To make a long story short I cleaned up the best I could and stayed at the luncheon for another hour and a half feeling quite yucky.

Recent Episode 2: I learned a little bit from Episode 1, but still didn’t learn enough. We are now fast forwarding six days later. I am on my flight back to Virginia. It is just myself, Savannah, and Zachery. Jared and RJ flew out five days earlier. We are in the Salt Lake airport with an hour lay over. We have just enough time to pick up some lunch and let the kids play at one of the play stations in the airport (side note: I LOVE having layovers in Salt Lake, they have the best airport to entertain young kids). So, I picked up some Chinese food; orange chicken and fried rice. The kids were too busy playing to bother with food. But I had them each try a bite to make sure they liked it so they would have something to eat when we got in the air. Savannah tried the chicken and liked it, Zachery had a bite of rice and didn’t gag. Oh good! I don’t have to spend any extra and their lunch. I ate my half of the meal and saved the rest for the kids until we were on the flight. Being a young mother I was able to board the massive plane first. Once we were all situated, Savannah asked for her chicken. I opened the plate, she had a bite. I processed to feed Zachery some rice. He apparently didn’t want to eat at the moment and started to gag. Now we were still in the board process, so there wasn’t anyone next to us and the stewards were all occupied. There was a young lady in the window seat across the aisle who got a first hand look at our situation and another young mother behind us.

Picture this: Zachery starts gagging, I start chanting “Please don’t, please don’t” The pleading doesn’t work. Zachery looses it and there goes everything in his stomach and more. The only thing I have to catch the mess in is my hands. So with a handful of throw up I ask my three year old to open the back pack and find the wipes for me. Zachery is still continuing to gag for a second round, some how I manage to get a hold of a diaper and catch the second round in that and dump what was in my hands into the lunch plate. (Now I did try looking for the barf bags in the seat pocket, but they were shoved to the bottom and were not very easy to access). Savannah is tring her best to help but to my dismay Savannah starts to gag. I start chanting again “Please don’t. Please don’t” The only thing in my hands at the time is a diaper full of throw up so I thrust that in her face to catch her vomit the whole time chanting “Please don’t” Well, how could she not? If you had throw up thrust in your face, wouldn’t you loose it too? The lady next too me probably thought I was crazy!

Once Savannah was done I tried desperately to get an airline attendants attention as well as some wipes to clean up our mess. The lady next too me suggested using the blanket, the airlines give you, to wipe everything up. I took her suggestion. Some how none of us got any throw up on our clothing, so it was an easy clean up. The lady behind me gave me a bag to dump all the mess in. Once cleaned up I got the airline attendants attention, finally, and he took the bag away for me. This all happened in about five minutes while people were busy boarding the plane. I finally located the barf bags in the seat pockets in front of us so they were handy in case I needed them the rest of the flight. Thankfully we didn’t need them.

Needless to say the rest of the flight was pretty uneventful except for Savannah being quite upset because her lunch got thrown away, apparently she was looking forward to that Orange Chicken.