Flying Red Eye, Trying to get Shut Eye

We're back from vacation!! It was MUCH NEEDED time off , but I can't believe I actually survived the flights. We left on Wednesday evening at 10:55 and arrived at our first stop in Colombia at 6:00 AM! I can't even begin to explain what this was like for the girls. They are used to sleeping on their own and being able to spread out and move around (they both move A LOT while they sleep). I felt so bad because they both kept waking up when they moved to get comfortable and would look at me with the saddest eyes of discomfort. The woman that was sitting in front of the baby was very upset, she even turned around several times and gave her dirty looks to try and get her to stop kicking her seat. Now, I definitely understand that it sucks to have someone kicking the back of your chair when you are tired and on a plane but 1- she is a baby, giving her dirty looks means nothing to her 2- I had managed to get permission to use the paid ticket for the baby and therefore have her in her car seat so she slept most of the time, it was maybe 45- 1 hr that she was awake and maybe 20min to 30 min of sporatic kicks. Maybe it's because I'm her mom, but I was very proud of her and thought that she was very well-behaved. I mean two kids under 3 on a red eye??? I even had a woman copliment me on the girls on her way out so, besides the cranky woman in front of Leeya it seemed like others agreed with me.
On the way back to the US it was a muh different story. There was a huge mix up and hubby left when we were supposed to and I waited for my mom and sister. Even after the wait, the girls and I still had to leave without them (I am sparing you the details of a horrific 2 days dealing with Avianca employees that flatout lied to us). Liana was very cranky from the wait and to make things worse she spilled water all over herself and threw a fit until I took her pants off so she was in her panties from then on since all our luggage was checked. She threw another HUGE tantrum on the plane and I wanted to crawl in a hole and die!!! The flight attendants kept coming by and very politely saying how she really needed to stop screaming. I don't remember how I finally got her quiet but as soon as she got settled she fell fast asleep. After a few minutes in the air, she fell off her seat and while I thought that she would never get back to sleep, I realized that it was a blesing since she had more room to sleep on the floor and I left her there (PLEASE do not write me about how this is abuse, I swear I thought about it a lot, but she was truly comfortable and slept the whole way). Since she slept on the floor I was able to lay the baby out on her seat and sat next to her, holding her so that she wouldn't fall. Basically the only one that didn't sleep was me, making sure that both girls were comfy and that Leeya didn't fall on top of Liana while she was sleeping. She did keep hitting her head on the arm rest and she would wake up cying each time she did it, so I was also holding her trying to get her not to move up too far. Overall, it was a very very tiring trip and my lesson learned was to never do a red-eye trip with youg kids again OH and more importantly, never fly AVIANCA ever!!!


Here they are, sleeping on the way there: