Air Travel with wild boys 

My Dad is famous for his story of taking a sleeping pill (or two) every time he got on board an international flight, writing seat numbers on the back of our hands & then passing out. With his (nearly flawless) logic, where the hell could we escape to?! In his defence, apart from losing a shoe, a few hundred matchbox cars & infinite coloured pencils, we never lost a family member.
We’ve been talking about this trip since we booked it 9 months ago but it has really only dawned on me now that we are leaving tomorrow night & I am petrified of how my ‘spirited’ (I prefer plain old naughty / wild / feral, but this doesn’t sit well with everyone) boys will behave. 

To put it in perspective, on our last trip to Europe about an hour into the flight my then 2 year old (who still has an explosive temper), threw his drink bottle. Which landed in the lady in front’s dinner. When we had 20 HOURS OF FLYING TO GO. 

So I haven’t packed Valium or ear plugs for the surrounding passengers. I’ve packed ear plugs for the kids so they can listen to whatever crap is playing on the screens. We are borrowing an iPad. I have books for my 6 year old which will no doubt go untouched, just wasting space in my bag. 

We have Ninja Turtles UNO although with my competitive streak & the boys unwillingness to lose anything, it could turn ugly. 

We have Despicable Me & Ninja Turtles activity books, which needless to say they will fight over, scribble on each other & throw on the floor. Coloured pencils will no doubt come in handy for creating lovely artworks with (oh come on, we both know they will attempt to stab each other with them). 

We have travel monopoly – which will no doubt be the source of some form of tantrum about who gets the dog & who gets the battleship. 

We’ve been given a ’50 Things to do on holiday’ which I’m pretty confident won’t include annoying every person on the plane, talking in the loudest possible voice & making inappropriate comments (last week’s was “Mum did I have milk from your v**ina?”) 

I’ve wrapped for each of them three little ‘build yourself’ minions with minimal pieces (as much as I enjoy attempting to be a contortionist & extracting miniature pieces of toys from between airplane seats). 

My Mum thought it would be a great idea to buy them each a watch where the time lights up when you press the screen. Fabulous for passengers who will be trying to sleep nearby.
I’ve brought one spare pair of clothes each & considering their aversion to underwear, they can just go without when they inevitably spill something over each other because I wanteddddddd the reddddddd one.

Anyone who knows me will expect there to be snacks hidden in the bag & you aren’t wrong. Organic freeze-dried Apple, freeze-dried mango, Whole Kids popcorn & of course (for me) some of my fave Conscious organic raw chocolate, y’know for emergencies – like when I haven’t slept for 36 hours straight. 

But hey, I wouldn’t be doing this if there wasn’t something special at the end (I’m not talking about vodka…yet). I get to see my little sister who I miss like crazy & haven’t seen in nearly a year. My cousin & her family. My other cousins who we are staying with in London. Plus other cousins (one of which was only born a few weeks ago). And some more cousins who are on our flight to Scotland (thankfully less than 2 hours for their sake). Because family is everything to me. So bring it on.

DISCLAIMER: no compensation will be provided to nearby passengers privy to my Gemini’s outbursts. 

POST-SCRIPT: hard to believe but they were amazing. I don’t sing my kids praises unless it’s genuinely deserved & in this case it was.