Flying With Children aka “The Monsters”

A couple of years ago we decided on a lovely family holiday. This was back when we only had one child, now we have two. We ummed and ahhed over flights to Cape Town, but in the end we decided that a road trip would be much more fun! What follows in this post is an account of day one of our journey!

Making it from the front door to the car

This is a post with no helpful travel hints on keeping your child occupied. We were quite lucky as my child kept herself rather well occupied; she did this by asking for us to stop for a wee every 18.7 minutes and alternating with the questions, “Where is the sea? When will be at the sea? Can I have a wee in the sea? Why can’t I pooh in the sea, I want to pooh in the sea? Does the sea have eyes? I want the sea? When can I see the sea? Can the sea see? When will we be at the sea?” All of this was as we were pulling out the driveway, in Benoni!

Expectation vs Reality

I envisioned the perfect holiday and it started out that way; perfectly chaotic that is, with a meltdown or two thrown in for good measure.

Meltdown one: Me to Ms K. “Morning, we are going to the sea my baby. You have a choice of these two outfits.”

What ensued was 40 minutes of screaming, crying and feeling sorry for oneself and that was just me! This is an ongoing problem in our household, getting Kenzie to wear the required outfit for the ensuing activity. Somehow, through the snot and tears, she ended up wearing a blue tutu with a spotted top and those plastic girly high heels, also known as, “eina” heels. Smugly, thinking we had won, we put her in the car, ready to leave for the sea. Come to think of it, Miss K won, she wore neither the dress nor the t-shirt and shorts combo that I put out.

They were cute outfits, I promise.

Meltdown two: Ms T didn’t want the cereal I made for her breakfast, nor did she want to sit, stand, crawl or smile.

Ok, let me rephrase that, I can be so negative sometimes; she did want to cry and moan.

Meltdown three: A mom, wondering where her perfect holiday vision had gone, as she sits in a cesspit tears that have washed away her dreams, as she starts drowning in the constant stream of pity and worthlessness.

First world problems can bite me.

At this stage we are already an hour behind schedule, and it is a bit more delayed as we have to stop for our obligatory personality, Coffee!

I’m all about solutions!

The perfect way to avoid any of the above is to fly with your children instead! Here are my top 5 reasons why flying with children is better than any of the above:

1. There are loos everywhere so nothing stops one from getting to said destination.
2. Not having to navigate. This is a whole other blog post, but honestly, how do marriages survive kids and directions on road trips?
3. The experience of flying. I love it and I hope my girls will love it even more than me.
4. Time. Saving time to holiday and getting to experience more. Let’s plan road trips when the kids are older.
5. Air Conditioned airport lounges.

In case I haven’t managed to convince you yet here is a video from our friends at Travelstart about their experiences of flying with children.

Here are 10 Tips for flying with children:

In case you were wondering, the next time we decide to go on holiday, we will definitely be booking cheap flights to Cape Town!

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