The Moving Process: Part III

We've officially been in "phase three" of our move for a little over a month now - sorry I haven't gotten to writing about it sooner!! Phase two left off in Michigan and the move from there happened in two parts, Zach and my dad loaded up our van one more time...and he hit the open road the morning of January 6th. I then spent another week in Michigan with my family soaking them up! On January 11th, my Grandma Kivimaki, David and I drove to Milwaukee where we would fly out of the next morning. We stayed the night at my Aunt Lynne and Uncle Scott's house - who were Amazing. My Aunt had a home cooked meal for us when we got there, my cousin Lauren gave up her room for me and David and my Uncle Scott got up and drove us 45 minutes to the airport at 5:00 in the morning! My cousin Sam was great too...he finally got over his fear of dropping babies and agreed to get a picture taken with David, the ONLY other boy on the Kivimaki side of the family! :)

So as I mentioned we left at 5:00 am the next morning to catch our 7:30 flight (ok...it was 5:15.) We got there and my grandma helped us get checked in and then I loaded David in the front carrier and prepared to go through security with a baby, two carry ons and a cooler full of bottles of milk!! I had gone over this in my head so many times before I left...how I would get through the security check point with all of this and not bring the line to a screeching halt! I had placed all my electronics in an accessible pocket, along with my plastic baggie of liquids and gels, my boarding pass and drivers license and my printed proof from the TSA website that breast milk was considered a medicinal substance that could be carried on in amounts greater than 3 oz! I was armed and ready to battle it out with any security officer who dared question this momma...but, it was a total breeze! Everyone was super nice, the security line was short, no one questioned my "medicinal substance" (though they did have to check each bottle with a little test strip) and it was probably the fastest I've ever made it through!

Once we got to the gate we probably only had to wait about 10 minutes or so and then we were boarding. The Lord was very gracious, I was in an aisle seat and the seat next to me was empty and the gentleman by the window (who's name was John) was so kind! David really liked him! He held him a couple times and when he would talk, David would just giggle and smile! The flight went very smoothly and after we took off I was able to heat up a bottle and not long after David finished he took about an hour nap in my arms. He woke up just as we were beginning to descend but then his little ears started to hurt. I tried everything I could think of to help him - sucking on a pacifier, sucking on my fingers, drinking from a bottle so he would be swallowing, but none of this worked and he just screamed! It was probably only for about 10 minutes but it felt like forever because there wasn't anything I could do about it. I just held him and rocked him and cried myself! But after we reached a point where the pressure wasn't bothering him as much he stopped crying and was happy as can be again! We landed about 10 minutes later, safe and sound in our new home state of Florida! More on the good ol' sunshine state and our new life here to come now that I've finally finished blogging about the move!