24 Hours of Travel, Covid, and a Few Saving Graces

As you know, the Leyko Fam Bam headed east for Christmas to visit my family. I had a healthy fear of traveling such a long distance with 3 kids under 4 and a dog (cross country + some), but I felt good about our plan.

On the way, we overnighted in Seattle after the 2 hour flight from Ketchikan because you cannot pay me to do a red eye with small children, which is the only option to get from Alaska to Norfolk in one fell swoop. Even though getting set up as a family of 6 in a single hotel room, “sleeping,” and then repacking to re-check in for a full 14 hour day of travel is a lot…it did allow us time to regroup a bit before our longest day. Slumber Pods (portable black out tents) allowed Jo and Warren to sleep well in their pack & plays, and Anders did great sharing a bed with Aaron, Noma, and me. Though Aaron, Noma, and I got next to no sleep since Anders sleeps like he’s fighting off a great white shark…but it was most important that all three kids were well-rested before the cross-country flights! Can I get an amen!

The first bit of noteworthy insanity was during our layover in Chicago…I was 100% convinced we’d have another overnight before making it to Virginia. My parents even booked us a hotel room so we’d have it when we landed. Our flight out of Seattle was delayed so that we arrived 20 minutes before our connecting flight to Norfolk departed. Boarding closes 15 minutes before departure, so even without 3 kids and a dog, making it (in a completely different terminal with only a walking tunnel rather than a tram, mind you) would mean deplaning at the speed of light and running even faster.

Honestly, part of me would’ve rather just known for sure we’d miss the connection rather than stressing about the near-impossible scenario that we’d make it. Nonetheless, we did our deplaning dance as fast as possible so Aaron would be ready to bolt to the gate and potentially convince the agent to hold the plane while I followed with the kids as soon as our gate-checked stroller was available.

What is a “deplaning dance,” you ask? Well, it requires me holding wrestling Jo AND Warren next to a stranger while Aaron unbuckles the massive car seat Jo sits in, puts it in its giant bag, and then takes her back while I get Warren into the chest carrier, then I take Jo back while Aaron gets all backpacks onto our backs/stomachs. So at this point I have on a giant diaper bag, a baby on my front, and holding another baby on my side. I then hold Noma’s bag in the hand I’m not holding Jo with, and usher Anders with his big backpack to walk off the plane in front of me. Aaron has the giant carseat backpack on his back and his backpack on his front.

And with that, he bolted.

I waited for our stroller for so long— clearly in massive distress with 3 kids and a dog about to miss a flight— that the pilot of the plane noticed, and he actually used his own key to go down and find our stroller. He was amazing. He helped open it, get the kids in, and sent me bolting through the tunnel into the airport where I looked like an absolute MANIAC running as fast as I could while pushing two kids, wearing another, and holding a dog. Plus the huge bag on my back. People would literally gasp when they saw me.

I kept thinking how glad I was to have a mask disguise on while simultaneously cursing it. Wearing a mask while doing the most stressful cardio of your life feels like you have someone’s hand over your mouth. It was the worst but also thank God I was unrecognizable as a huffed and puffed in an embarrassing sprint, tears streaming down my face from the panic.

After finding all the different elevators required to get from terminal tunnel to terminal tunnel since I couldn’t very well get on escalators, running through never-ending said tunnels, and squeaking loud “excuse me”s at people in my way (who were mortified when they saw me), I made it to the gate. In a truly miraculous turn of events, they’d held the plane.

So then we boarded dead last…everyone on board had been waiting for us. So all 200-something people were watching as we tried to quickly get THREE CHILDREN situated. It was a high pressure situation, to say the least. Again, thank you mask for hiding my face.

BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE. Once the car seat was out, the kids were in the right seats, the baby was in the right lap, and they’d just started the safety demonstration, Anders insisted he had to pee. I told him this is why we put him in a pull-up for travel, and he’d just need to go in his pants. Buttttt he started screaming. So I got up and went to the front bathroom—closest to us—where the flight attendants informed me they’d have to turn off the entire safety video playing for the whole plane if he was going to the bathroom. At this point I’d already sweated through my clothing and still wiping away tears. All I could muster to them was “I don’t know what to do, I’m so sorry.” And with that, they turned off the video while the whole plane watched Anders and I enter the bathroom. We then did the walk of shame back to our seats and they started the video over.

You should know that all of this was a BREEZE compared to our return trip home.

Anyway, we made it to Virginia and the kids were, all-in-all, super easy during the trip. I thought to myself, “That wasn’t bad at all. If there hadn’t been the delay, it would’ve been pretty easy. Traveling with 3 kids is tiring, but doable.”

LOLOLOLOL.

So. We had a wonderful time in Virginia. Friends, family, Christmas, birthdays, etc. Besides the night that Josephine caught a stomach bug from her cousin and threw up 7 times in ONE NIGHT (omg poor thing, that was TERRIBLE…literally threw up on the hour every hour starting at midnight), things were pretty smooth. I mean, we averaged 4 hours of sleep a night between the time change and babies who weren’t used to their environment, but seeing our loved ones was so much fun.

Here’s where things really started to go awry:

The day before we left, we learned that our 11 a.m. flight had been moved to 7 a.m. Instead of a full night of rest, we’d be waking the kids up at 4 a.m. to get to the airport two hours in advance since we’d learned check-in times were taking a crazy-long time. With that in mind, we got the kids to bed early and were in bed, ourselves, by 8:30 p.m.

Shortly before 10 p.m., Anders woke up sobbing (completely unlike him). When we asked him what was wrong, he screamed that his ears hurt and was inconsolable. An ear infection??? GREAT. We called my father-in-law, who is a family-practice doctor, and he said we should take him to get looked at because flying with an ear infection would be torturous without meds— but we should probably postpone our trip back anyway, because even with meds, flying with his ears in that condition would be a huge risk.

So while Aaron got Warren back to sleep (Anders had woken him up), I packed Anders into the car and headed toward the ER. Long story here—but basically we were out of baby formula for Warren because he’d needed an extra bottle to get back to sleep which dug into our already-too-small supply for the airplane, plus we were out of baby Tylenol he’d needed for teething and that we’d also given to Anders when he woke up sobbing—so I had to take Anders to pick up those things on the way to the doctor. Except it was 10:04 p.m. when I pulled up to Rite Aid and it closed at 10 p.m. Only to find that every grocery store and pharmacy closed at 10. Until I figured out that Walmart—not a close drive—was open until 11. So I hauled Anders all the way to Walmart to go shopping (in what is essentially the middle of the night for a kid who goes to bed at 7:30 pm).

By the time we were running through Walmart, Anders seemed absolutely fine. As we drove to the ER, I asked him if his ears still hurt. He said no. This made no sense to me because Tylenol isn’t strong enough for him to not feel weird at ALL if he had an ear infection, plus it hadn’t been long since he’d taken it. I pressed him, and he said he had had a bad dream about his ears popping during landing on the airplane. This makes sense because his ears hurt when we landed every time on the way to Virginia, and I knew he was anxious about leaving.

Nonetheless, we went to the ER because I wanted someone to look in his ears and double check before we had a screaming kid in pain 30,000 feet up with infected ears. We walked in, and it was the grossest experience of my life. Packed almost shoulder to shoulder were masked people who all looked to be carrying Omicron. The triage nurse quickly told me it was so crowded that we were highly unlikely to even be seen by our 4 a.m. departure for the airport. Yeahhhhhno.

So I then took Anders all the way back home while calling the other ERs in Virginia Beach, who all had the same news. By 11:30 p.m. Anders was washed up and back in bed. Aaron and I decided to go for the trip back home since Anders seemed fine, and we were in bed by midnight. Four hours later, our alarm went off and we rolled all the kids into the pre-packed car while checking off the last minute things that needed to be thrown into bags.

We wouldn’t have an overnight stay on the way back to Alaska, so we were looking at 20 hours of straight travel. Entering that on little sleep was less than ideal.

The first leg was fine, but Jo was definitely not in as great of spirits as she was on the way over. She turned 2 on Christmas Eve and allllll the sass came out. I also don’t think she was feeling too well (we’ll get to that later). So we had some screaming, but overall it was fine considering it was a solid 4 hour flight from Norfolk to Dallas.

When we landed, we went straight to our next gate, happy that we had a 3 hour layover to let Noma out, get the kids some food, and not stress. The only thing we needed to figure out was why they’d suddenly moved our seats so that we were no longer sitting together on the flight. Obviously a 2-year-old and a 4-year-old can’t sit alone…right?

American Airlines disagrees.

Long story short, Aaron and I spent the full THREE HOURS trying to convince THREE DIFFERENT agents to help us after waiting in impossibly long lines, only for them to all talk to me like I was crazy or high maintenance (even though I’d booked out seats together and it wasn’t my fault they’d been changed by the airline). I have no words for how rude these people were.

I was holding Jo for 45 minutes in one of the lines, who was crying, while Aaron was sitting with the bags feeding Warren and trying not to let Anders run away, and the gate agent made me cry within 5 seconds of speaking because she was so mean. I don’t have the word count available to go into details, but it was horrific. She basically gave me exactly 3 seconds to speak and then said, “There’s nothing I can do to help you,” and when I tried to say, “Please, I don’t understand…” she completely cut me off and was like, “I answered your question which is what you wanted me to do, right? And my answer is I can’t do anything so you need to leave.” In the most vicious tone you can imagine.

We tried a different gate agent who said there was nothing he could do either. I was like, how is this legal?? My children cannot sit next to strangers! They aren’t old enough to even speak! It was wild, you guys.

So then this incredible woman traveling with her two pre-teens heard me crying to Aaron, and she came over to say she had 3 seats in a row and was happy to give them to us. She said she remembers flying with her kids when they were little, and wanted to help us. I could cry grateful tears just thinking about her. Amber. Unfortunately, we couldn’t just do our deal “under the table” because airlines need to make sure infants are in specific rows. So she came to the desk with me to tell the agents she wanted switch seats with us. We stood there forEVER as they literally made us stand to the side while helping all the people in line BEHIND us, and we were like, waitttt are they working on our seats or no?

Boarding started, and by this time I was like, is Amber going to need to just get on the dang plane?? I can’t be the reason she gets left behind! Because the agents kept LITERALLY waving me off with their hands when I asked for an update. By the time they got to the LAST boarding group, they handed me 3 new boarding passes and said “we got you 3 in a row because this other nice lady said she’d do it for you.” (Again, as though we were being difficult). And Amber was like, “Oh no problem.” They said “Who are you?” And she was like “Um I’m the one that talked to you 30 minutes ago and have been standing here the whole time because I gave our seats to them.” They said, “Oh no we don’t need you.” It was insane. Just insane. So Amber got on with her kids, and then Aaron and I got our kids and were the LAST ones to board. This all took so long—literally until we were the last people on the plane—that Noma never got let out (16 hours in a bag by the end of that flight), we’d not eaten…it was a mess.

Luckily, Aaron was able to convince the person in the row next to us to switch so he could sit with us, and we were off. But I cried the second we got situated because all the stress couldn’t stay in any longer. I started shaking and having a near-panic attack because of what had just happened. Juggling 3 tired, hungry kids in an airport is hard enough without adding 3 hours of lines and mean people on top of it. I keep thinking about Amber, though— the saving grace in the midst of a lot of negative. Even though we ended up not sitting in her seats, after all, she’d kept me together those final 30 minutes, promising me she didn’t mind waiting and offering me so much comfort. I’ll never, ever forget her.

We landed in Seattle, grateful our final leg would be with Alaska Air—known for their incredible customer service—instead of American (barf). At this point, we hit 16 hours of travel already. Anddd unfortunately our plane got delayed three hours. We were now looking at a full 23 hours of travel by the time we’d arrive— 24 hours before we’d be in our beds.

In another saving grace, we ran into Anders’ good friend from school and her mom (who also happens to be his swim teacher!) waiting for the same plane. They’d been visiting family in Seattle, so their trip was a pretty quick one— just this 2 hour plane ride up to Ketchikan. She was so gracious and watched Anders almost the entire time while he played with his friend, distracted from his exhaustion, while Aaron and I rocked Jo and Warren.

By the way, Warren had developed a nasty cough as the day had progressed, which was both concerning and embarrassing. I had a small cough too, but figured it was just from spending so long in a mask.

We finally boarded, grateful for the unmatched service by Alaska Air. Despite being exhausted, it was easily the easiest time of our trip— both in the gate waiting area and on the flight. The agents were kind, helpful, and patient. They even gave us a full double row without us asking because they had a few extra seats and saw we were traveling with 3 tired kids. So Anders and Jo both got to spread out and sleep. The flight attendants were practically doting, insisting they carry Noma for us, offering to pack up the car seat, doing everything possible to make us comfortable. And of course we boarded first because they give special treatment to active duty military, as well as people traveling with young children. I can’t speak enough on how much we appreciate Alaska Air.

When we landed, Aaron headed out to the car to dig it out from all the snow while I waited for our bags with the kids. Unfortunately, our bag with the kids’ monitors and sound machines hadn’t made it, so we had to do the whole claim thing…whew, that was not the greatest way to end the trip. But Alaska in general is full of over-the-top kind people, and I can’t complain about how great they were at handling the lost luggage. We got everything else and the kids into the car, onto the ferry, across the water, and back home by 11:40 p.m. Alaska time, so 3:40 a.m. Eastern. Our alarms had gone off at 4:00 a.m. Eastern one day prior. Whew.

Our bag was delivered to our house yesterday—two days later, and we were able to survive the last two nights because my best friend on the island lended us extra sound machines. I’m telling you—they increase our kids’ sleep by 10 fold. Another saving grace, who’d also lended us her amazingly functional diaper bag and a few other things for the trip. Love you, Steph.

So anyway…you know that cough I mentioned? We decided to get tested for Covid the next morning as soon as everybody woke up. Jo and Anders weren’t themselves (which explains Jo’s screaming) at this point and Warren’s cough had worsened throughout the night, too, so I got a virtual appointment with his pediatrician. Lo and behold…my Covid test came back positive.

Why not end such an insane trip with Covid, right??

Obviously, I feel terrible that I was traveling with it, but wasn’t symptomatic before we’d left. We’ve also been vaccinated and boosted. Oddly enough, the rest of the family, including Warren, tested negative. We all have slight cold symptoms, though, so we’re not sure about the accuracy. Thus, we’re all quarantining for the CDC’s recommended 5 days (10 for the kids since they don’t wear masks at school). So far, symptoms are mild. Warren ended up getting a PCR test from his pediatrician that also swabbed for RSV and the flu (along with Covid again) and came back negative on everything. Poor guy is easily the worst of us. He can hardly keep down formula…I’ve been thrown up on SO MUCH in the last 24 hours…but he seems to finally be on the mend today. His fever is down and his cough is lessening.

Needless to say, Aaron and I will not be staying up until midnight tonight. We’ll celebrate the new year at 8 p.m., which is midnight on the East Coast, so it counts right??

I can’t say I’d ever want to repeat the last three days, but the saving graces remind me of all the good in the world. The way my parents supported us the whole time we were there, and that last night when Anders had a fake ear infection. Amber in Dallas. Anders’ school friend’s mom in Seattle. The Alaska Air employees. And all my friends who’ve helped in person or Venmo’d me for coffee, wine, and meds just to make sure I know how supported I am after the crazy travel (which I documented in my Insta stories) and Covid. The kind, loving people in the world truly are more powerful and plentiful than the not-so-great folks.

Grateful to be home, grateful for the good, and excited for what 2022 has in store! Happy New Year!