Allow me a moment to indulge in some shameless bragging about my lils. Yes, I know that every parent knows that their child is the best and that is how it should be, but in this case, I have independent verification of the lils status. They are simply fabulous.
When Willy first started talking about going to Las Vegas at the end of April, we both realized that it was really close to our trip to Canada. So close that it would have meant he would have flown home to India and essentially hopped back on a plane two days later to return to North America. It would have been painful, and I could not ask him to try. I told him to go to the conference in Vegas, then hang around, work where work wanted him, and meet us at home when we got there. I told him this even though I knew it meant I would be home alone with the lils for two weeks, and that I would have to fly home alone with them when we returned to Canada.
As luck would have it, Goose came down with a cold the day that Willy left. This surprised me in no way, as the lils ALWAYS get sick when Willy goes away. When Woo started sniffling two days later, I was somewhat relieved, thinking they were getting it over with long before our flights. The sniffles persisted, and got slightly worse each day. Then two nights before we were due to leave Woo casually mentioned that he could not hear.
We headed off to the doctor, and were given Benadryl to help clear his congestion. When he still could not hear the morning of our flight, we headed back to the doc and learned that he had an ear infection. To this point I had been mildly worried about the almost thirty hour trip we were about to embark on, but this news ramped it up to plain scared. Two sick lils, one with an ear infection? I expected the worst.
The opposite happened. My best case scenario of having them maybe sleep on one of the flights, possibly fight just a little bit, and only have to repeat things two or three times completely underestimated how good they were. They listened, they had fun, slept a lot, got along perfectly and were really quiet. We had two minor meltdowns, one when Goose’s juice cup exploded all over her jammies and the other when Woo was being forced by the crowds down the ramp to customs in Ottawa.
I was pretty convinced that they were great at this point, but was a little tickled by the number of people who came up to us following both flights and complimented the lils on how well behaved they were. There was a steady stream of kudos coming from other passengers, and I got a wee bit prouder with each one! While I don’t ever plan on making such a long trip with them solo, I’d gladly do it after this experience!!
Your lils are indeed fabulous… but you are a freaking hero.