I've added in one more purchase Robert remembered I made...I bought this cute Mickey head popsicle-mold thing. 
We got to the airport with tons of extra time, yay! I mean, it's a super-boring airport (unlike Seatac, which is a feast for the senses and has "street" pricing rules), but after almost missing that plane last December, we were happy to be bored.
Got everything squared away with the airline, and went over to sit down still in that area, to eat whatever food we still had (tried to figure out "is mac and cheese a liquid/gel?" because along with my chili I got the toddler mac/cheese meal to get E a water and b/c he loved that mac/cheese when his Aunt bought it to share with him (she's eats like a bird, to share that tiny portion!)), drink whatever water we had, etc.
Finally got that situated, and ran into a strange thing with TSA. Instead of going upstairs, they had us go *down*. And they weren't being great with the explanations. I don't know if this is just how they are doing it now...but when we watched the NCIS LA that had been shown on Tuesday, we saw that they had a scene set at LAX, and sort of wondered if they had moved things around for that?
Anyway, instead of going up, we went down. Man that was a long line. Not sure why, but it was!
Then we got to the gate, and found out that every other west coast VA flight was heavily delayed. One flight had been delayed for hours already. I guess there were big storms in San Francisco and that was messing up everything. Our flight was delayed, but not by hours.
The time waiting for the flight was harder than usual. I can't really remember why, but I think exhaustion was a key, along with E not wanting to eat.
At long last our flight was called, and the plane was half empty! In retrospect I wish that we had moved seats, b/c there was a LARGE empty space in the middle of the plane. But we stayed towards the back where a bunch of other people were...come to think of it, maybe we had a half empty flight because flights connecting in/coming from SF couldn't get there?
Robert fell asleep pretty fast. E got hungry almost immediately. I had *nothing* left and he was really grossed out by the leftover veggie burger and grilled cheese...so I checked out the VA offerings. Got a cheese plate for 8 bucks. Well, he loved it. He's a big cheesey kid.
And finally he was full and took a nap. Then woke up. Then slept. And woke up. Then it was around half an hour before starting our descent, and I wanted to put his earplanes in. Which I did. And he napped. then about 10 minutes before descent...he lost one. And...he lost it.
He started crying, wailing...he gets VERY dramatic when he's afraid of pain (yet about 2 weeks later dealt with having blood drawn with nary a peep!), and those words include "we're doomed, we're doomed"....oh man that is NOT what I want to hear on a plane! So he was crying and freaking out, and the two kids behind us were totally fine and it was embarrassing and I felt bad for him and everyone...searching for the earplane he lost...I was on the ground as best I could. In a way to explain his growing freakout, I asked the lady behind me if she'd seen the little blue thing on the ground, and she couldn't, and while I was turned that way I explained to the rows behind us what was going on...they were sympathetic.
Still couldn't find it, we were telling him he would be OK and he'd be fine, and he REFUSED to sit down (OMG) and was crying and breathing fast and....he threw up. On Robert.
There are no emoticons for the moment.
Right then...the "seatbelt on" sign went on.
Since part of the mess was on his seat...sitting wasn't possible, and it wasn't a pleasant thing to be around and it really couldn't be left there.
I had to rush back to the flight attendants and tell them that he'd thrown up, and they gave me a huge wad of paper towels. I ran back, cleaned up some. But we *had to* get into seatbelts, so I grabbed a few towels and Eamon and went to the other row, leaving poor Robert to clean the seat and himself.
As we moved, one of the kind, should get a medal, wonderful women sitting 3-in-a-row behind the mom with kids, handed me a piece of gum for him. At that point...I did not care what was in it. Gum is almost always off limits...sugar-gum is corn syrup. Sugar-free gum has chemicals. Only one brand of gum is OK, and we can't find it outside of Seattle. But I did not care. HE started chewing it and instantly was happier. He knows that gum helps. And it helped.
And it helped things smell a bit better (those artificially sweetened gums really do stink of mint, don't they?).
We made it at long last. We were last off the plane. As people behind us left, I apologized to them and THANKED them for their kindness and patience. I felt SO bad for us making their flight so rotten in that last 40 minutes or so.
Don't get me wrong, I felt worse for my little guy who got so worked up he got sick...but once the crisis was done I was empathetic towards them. And I do feel awful for Robert, since he got the brunt of it, but since that was the FIRST time he was thrown up on, compared to about 6 times for me (and I'm not even counting the spit-up days), full-on sympathy is limited.
We gathered our stuff, braved the cold, got to our shuttle pickup area. Had to wait what felt like ages...R and I were trying to be jolly for miserable-Eamon and made a silly bet about how many shuttles would go by before it was ours. I said it would be a million. Robert said something like 8. He was right. Shuttle, car, home.
Ahhhhhh.
Right now, I know that I am in a place of missing
Disneyland like crazy. I yearn to go there, to see it at Yuletime. We spent early December there the last two years!!!
But I know it's not going to happen in December, and it could only happen at any point in the coming year if we had a windfall AFTER paying off the car and saving everything for WDW.
I am very excited for WDW, and have started a preprepretrip report for it, as Shannon has noticed. I don't even have dates finalized with my cousin, but I'm already writing about it. And to make the trip even more fun, we've decided we're going to work in some kitschy "old" florida stuff, like DinoWorld and such.
It's going to be a whole new world, albeit similar in spots, from Disneyland/CA. I'm learning everything again, even though honestly I check out the WDW sections of this board every time I log in. I thought I knew quite a bit, but actually thinking of "what day would I do that park" is very different from more general thoughts!
But I am going to miss Disneyland Resort for the next year, that's for sure.
