My Kid Threw Up in the Uber: A Positive Perspective of Traveling with Littles

I had every intention of writing a post all about the Disney cruise.

And Warren’s first birthday.

But my brain is fried on those fronts. I’ve formed all the words I’m capable of stringing together about Warren turning one on my Instagram (@shannonleyko). And I love answering questions about the Disney cruise (DM me if you have one!), but you can see for yourself how magical it was in my highlight on the Gram.

I guess I’m more in the mood to write about other ~feels~ at the moment. In a sense, it does kind of relate to the Disney cruise because what my fingers want to type are a reflection—maybe a defense…maybe an encouragement—of our travel experience on the flight(s) home from Florida.

If you read my Christmas travel post, then you know we aren’t strangers to stressful situations that inevitably occur when traveling with young children. And that’s actually the point!

You see, I don’t mean to scare anyone when I share here or in my stories the tough experiences with our kiddos. But to catch you up on travel for the Disney cruise, I was running to catch a connecting flight while wearing Warren on my chest and pushing the other two in the stroller, and ate it harddd. My knee is still recovering, as is my ego. Warren projectile vomited an absolutely outrageous amount of vomit all over Aaron and the seat next to him on the final leg home. Which reminds me that on the way there, Jo vomited all over the Uber at midnight after we’d finally arrived in Florida (only to find that the car we’d ordered wasn’t coming and the taxi stand was closed). What else. Oh! Aaron left his phone in Seattle. Jo screamed a ton on the 6.5-hour flight (7.5 hours if you include the delay on the runway) and I walked with her up and down the aisle for literal hours. And frankly, those are just a ~few~ of the less-than-ideal moments on our trip.

However there are two things that are so much more influential than really challenging moments: Mental preparation and shining stars.

Let’s start with mental preparation. Aaron and I never go into cross-country travel with 3 kids ages 4 and younger with any expectation whatsoever that it’ll be smooth. I was not surprised when Warren threw up everywhere. I was not surprised when Anders decided he had to pee right as we were about to take off even though I’d taken him potty immediately prior to boarding. I wasn’t surprised that our flight got delayed, leaving us with another dramatic run to a connecting flight…that we missed.

When you don’t have expectations, it’s hard to feel frustrated or defeated or impatient. Was it still exhausting? Of course! But it didn’t feel as bad as it sounded to everyone in my DMs telling me that this is why they don’t travel with little kids. That made me sad! I personally think the travel is worth it because it’s really not as stressful as it sounds if you accept ahead of time that it won’t be easy. For us, that mental prep allows us to enjoy the memories of a wonderful vacation without being scarred by the travel it takes to get there. Well—maybe a little scarred.

Along those lines, mental preparation means being prepared to focus on the positive. Like the fact that since we missed our connecting flight, we were put on a later flight that was all but empty. This mean that when Warren projectile vomited, there was no one sitting in the seat where it landed next to Aaron. Can you imagine how much worse THAT would have been?

We could focus on the fact that a missing connection meant the kids had time to eat dinner, which helped them calm down since they were over snack food and didn’t like any of the real food we ordered on the 6.5-hour first flight.

The second way to mentally cancel out difficult moments during travel is by focusing on what I call “shining stars.” I wrote about the stranger-woman who helped me maintain sanity on our flight home from Christmas. She’s the perfect example of a shining star.

This time, the shining stars were the people who helped an embarrassed and flustered mom back to her feet after falling while wearing a baby and pushing two others. The folks that smiled at Jo and me as we walked up and down the aisle for an hour. The flight attendants on our last flight who didn’t make us feel bad for Warren’s throw up, offering comforting words and trash bags.

And you want to hear about the COOLEST shining star moment??

Right before Warren threw up on him, Aaron realized he’d left his phone at the gate back in Seattle. That was a pretty miserable realization, quickly made worse by being covered in nastiness. BUT when we got home, I mentioned the mishap on Instagram, and a woman I’ve never met in person who lives in Ketchikan happened to be in the Seattle airport—and went and got Aaron’s phone! We sent her the “find my iPhone” pin that showed it at our gate, and she went to a totally different terminal to retrieve it so she could bring it back to our tiny island after her trip.

And this kind stranger wasn’t the only person willing to go save the phone! Our dog-sitter also saw our plight on Instagram and was about to go rescue it right after the other person had already found it. We had two friends traveling the following morning who’d offered to get it then. I had people who live in Seattle—or even an hour away—offer to drive to the airport to get it.

The internet did WORK that day and reminded us that this world is full of absolutely selfless and exceedingly kind individuals. It was kind of worth Aaron losing his phone just so we could experience that sense of community people showed us the following day as they offered to help.

Anyway, all this is to say that traveling with little kids sounds terrible—but really, there are few parts of life that aren’t difficult. Period. Living is hard. I appreciate knowing that, because every single day, I strengthen my coping skills. I nix the pity parties and manage expectations so that I can be happy no matter what. Faith helps too. As a whole, knowing that life isn’t supposed to be “easy” leaves me prepared to handle even the “hardest” of the difficult days— like traveling with small kids. If we can go through life not letting the external affect our internal, it’s pretty amazing the adventures we can have!

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I meant to post this weeks ago, and since posting, we traveled yet again to San Diego. I stand by everything written! San Diego included a trip to the ER at midnight our first night there, the parking lot on the airport side of Ketchikan being full— meaning we had to trek 3 car seats, 3 very cold and wet babies, and 2 suitcases in freezing rain onto the ferry on foot (both for departure and arrival), and lots of little moments of insanity in between. Still, the positives of seeing my mom’s family, enjoying the zoo, and meeting shining stars—like the guy who gave us his unopened pack of gummy bears when Anders’ ears wouldn’t pop and I couldn’t reach our gummies—along the way was worth every single second.