You're a Princess


On the return plane trip, shortly before I started threatening her life.


We're back. We flew back on Monday night. The only problem was that I'd already reached Maximum A sometime over the weekend. So, I was not looking forward to the two flights back. She was a pill on the two flights out to DC, but my tolerance was higher then.

The thing about being on a plane is that you can't exact discipline your child effectively. And said child knows it. A knew she had me over a barrel and there was nothing I could do but to hiss various threats at her. She slammed the window shade up and down. She kicked her chair. She demanded candy. At one point I grabbed her arm and she pulled out the ol' time-tested "DON'T HURT ME!" trick.

On the second flight (which was delayed because of de-icing and whatever else it is they do to delay planes), there were some kids sitting nearby who are performing in a traveling production of Disney's High School Musical. I shouldn't call them kids because they were probably in their early 20's. Anywho, they were scattered about the plane, with one guy sitting next to me and one sitting behind us. Towards the end of the flight they were talking to my irritable kid and when they asked her what her name is she said, "I'm a princess!" Then she told the guy next to me that he's a princess. And then, "You're a princess, too!" to the guy behind me. The only reason this was amusing is that these two are princesses, iff'n you know what I mean (nudge nudge wink wink). They were very nice and didn't seem to mind that my kid and I had a knock-down-drag-out fight about her seatbelt every 2.8 seconds. (I finally asked the flight attendant to tell A that she had to keep it on, which seemed to help somewhat.)

When we finally landed back at our original airport, I pushed the stroller (with my darling child in it) towards her dad as soon as I saw him. "Congratulations, Mr. M!" I said. "It's a girl!"



All four grandkids together for the first time.



A and her cousin on a rickety (and insanely fun) old ride at Ocean City, MD


The three sisters (yes, the one on the left is lactating, in case you wondered)

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