Big Ol' Jet Airliner

Sooooooo...the bottom line is that we survived. As I was lugging my new suitcase to the car, I thought it would be a good idea to weigh it and it was about 20 lbs over the 70lb limit. I had to hastily chuck some of my stuff into our other suitcase all the while thinking about how ticked Dan was going to be about it. We had agreed to throw this one away in the US as it had a gaping hole in it, we have no space for it in HK, and it's hard to dispose of large items at the hotel. I had 2 huge suitcases, diaper bag, stroller, very large red carry on duffel bag, mini igloo type food shoulder bag for Stella's food....oh yeah, and Stella too.

We got lucky and the lady waived us through the handicapped security line at LAX, probably due to me clumsily trying to deal with all the baggage plus child. We arrived at the entrance to the brand new oneworld lounge and, of course, the elevator was broken. Stella was starving which made waiting for the sluggish TSA escort to the cargo elevator just miserable. The lounge was packed which made it hard to find a place for us to sit away from the riff raff. Stella wolfed down a few jars of food and my outfit and hers were both trashed before we even got on the airplane because I had no place to strap her in. No, she won't eat in her stroller. She wanted to crawl around the floor and kept banging on the lounge's emergency exit. I was afraid she was going to set off some kind of alarm.

We boarded the plane and I gave her the first dose of Children's Benadryl and silently prayed (hard) that it would work. It did. She fell asleep for 2.5 hours. I reclined her seat fully flat and strapped her in. I watched The Nanny Diaries, ate lunch and had a few drinks. Though as they were serving the main course she started to stir (I kept thinking NO NO NO!! PLEASE NO!!) and then, presto, she was wide awake gunning for my Kobe beef. And then it was miserable. She did not want to sit still. She would rotate from sitting in her seat, sitting on me, playing on the floor, etc. for the entire flight. She ate an entire canister of Puffs, a ton of Japanese rice, Japanese mashed potatoes and basically whatever she wanted because I just wanted her to be quiet!!! After 7 hours (per the doctor's instructions), I gave her the second dose of Benadryl and she was tired but fought it. She was ticked I wouldn't let her crawl into the aisle, crawling all up the back of her seat, banging on everything, squealing and basically doing everything you don't want on an airplane. She finally fell asleep as we landed in Tokyo. And, the flight took over 12 hours because we didn't get clearance to land for some time. I was sooooo miserable. That's the longest it's ever taken me to get to Tokyo and I seriously couldn't believe that we had to get on another flight. I was having a terrible headache because I had to wear my contacts on the plane. Stella would have been pulling off my glasses the entire time. And, I did not sleep at all, per usual.

The bathroom trips were the worst. Very clean, thankfully...the bathrooms, that is. She did not want to lay on the changing table and at one point while I was trying to get her pjs back on she had ripped about 50 kleenexes out of the box and threw them all over the floor. She broke the amenity basket too trying to get to the Shiseido lotion. I could go on and on.

We arrived at Narita and went to the older JAL lounge. The last one we were in was soooo nice but this one was almost gross. Gave her the 3rd Benadryl dose and she slept the entire way to HK. The only thing is that we were on the older 747 and the business class seats didn't recline flat so she slept on me. I didn't get to eat a thing and the food looked sooooo good. Dan picked us up at the airport and we were both overtired and cranky.

To top it off, 2 days later she got a stomach flu that almost sent her to the hospital. And then I got it, too.