"In the event of a barf landing . . ."

The baby travels well. Grandma Susie took us to the airport and helped us load all of our luggage to checkout. After a tearful goodbye, I had to wrestle her to the ground and pry David from her arms. Then I strapped him into the baby carrier and we headed across the Eastern Plains of Colorado attempting to find our gate. Along the way, I got smiles and attention from everyone. Strapping a baby to your frontside is a sure way to get on everyone's good side. David, of course, returns the smiles with his own giggly response. It's great fun.

On the plane the woman trapped between us and the window was experienced with children, which was a blessing because even with two adults, it is still difficult to manage one's luggage and personal items in the cramped cabin of an airplane with sixteen wiggling fragile pounds of baby to keep off of the floor. She would pick up his binky when it dropped to the floor where I couldn't reach it, she dabbed his spit-up when I wasn't paying attention, she even got Jaime's water out of the bag at my feet when I was having trouble reaching it. It is a blessing that she had experience because it meant that she didn't mind getting spit up on at the end.

Jaime fed David when we boarded, but was concerned that he didn't get enough. He was content for most of the flight sucking on his pacifier, but started to get a little uncomfortable on the way down. So we gave him a bottle, which he eagerly consumed. He no longer seems content to drink his fill and be done. When a bottle with liquid is in front of him, he drinks. This will not serve him well in college. Well, that is new, so we didn't stop him as he emptied a rather large bottle of formula. Perhaps he was really hungry from traveling, right?

Then, I put him on my shoulder to burp.

But he didn't burp.

He barfed.

and barfed.

and barfed.

Everything that he had just eaten, everything he had eaten that day, everything that he had ever eaten came out of him. All that his mother had ever processed for him, all the formula that was ever made. At the reunion, we had some rockin' food prepared by people who spend a lot of time perfecting the preparation of food. Those folks can eat. Jaime processed a lot of great food into milk. It all came back--the brisket, the torte, the brownies, the baked beans, the pickles, those delicious little onions soaked in balsalmic vinegar. It poured over me like the Red Sea on Pharoah's soldiers. Thank God the seats can be used as flotation devices. Thank God the woman trapped by the window is forgiving, even with barf on her paperback. I have taken showers and have been less soaked. Remember that time, that one special summer when you and your love got caught in the tempest and didn't care because you were so in love and when you got home your soaked clothes clung to your skin, dripping and heavy and wet wet wet? That was merely humid dampness compared to the thorough soaking to the bones that I received as our plane touched down in Kansas. My clothes were soaked, all of our receiving blankets and barf rags, all of the barf rags of all the other babies on the plane, everything absorbent in the cabin, soaked. People started opening those little barf bags and filling them just to have a souvenir of The Worlds Biggest Baby Barf Ever.

The baby travels well, but don't burp him 'til you are out in the open.