So the plane rides were relatively uneventful. When describing our travel plans to friends and acquaintances before our trip, I got strange looks and lots of "good luck with that!", which I didn't think much of before we left. Now I understand. It is a serious undertaking merely to PACK for a week-long vacation with infants, much less to organize carry-on and checked luggage and get to the airport and rent carseats at holiday destination and keep everyone fed and in (clean) cloth diapers along the way. We were very lucky in that the boys were mostly good natured and our fellow passengers were empathetic and good sports about the whole thing. The oddest thing about the airplane situation is that you have to tell the airline in advance that you have a lap baby (a baby sitting in a paying adult's lap) but they apparently do no more to accommodate that situation than to print out an extra boarding pass for the baby. The problem is that each row of three seats has only four oxygen masks above it. Jeff and I were seated next to each other on each flight, so when another person was booked in the third seat, there was one too few masks on that row. So each flight we boarded we had to rearrange our seats to make sure everyone had a mask. Why the airline could not figure this out in advance and book our seats accordingly, I do not know. Twice we were asked to sit multiple rows away from each other, and once I had to tell a gate agent that that would not work because my breasts were not detachable. On the trip back from Florida we decided not to wait for the flight attendants to huddle anxiously around our row to try to find a creative solution to the problem; we simply asked people in our row to shuffle around for us so that we could sit on the aisles and pass babies across the aisle. We were lucky on the Philadelphia-Fort Myers flight to have the third person in our row moved elsewhere, so we had three seats between us. That would probably have been the optimal thing to do, to book a third seat. It was good to have a place where a baby could sit or we could stash toys and snacks and stuff. On the way back we probably should have fed the babies more food along the way, because I think Beck's crank factor was mostly because he was hungry (poor baby!). When we got home they practically ate their weight in cereal, yogurt, sweet potatoes and apples. But in all, we were lucky and the boys traveled pretty well. The vacation itself was absolutely wonderful and a much-needed escape from the end-of-winter doldrums here in Syracuse.
The boys enjoyed restaurant eating at our favorite spot on the island, the Lazy Flamingo. Theo especially could not get enough grouper (a mild, flaky white fish popular in the Gulf of Mexico), so much so that Mama Lovebo had to cut him off so she could get enough!
Theo also enjoyed chomping on the table, and Beck spent a good deal of time sucking on the menu.
Theo and Beckett were mesmerized by this guy with an awesome flamingo hat with a beak that extended a foot or two in front of his head. Look at Theo, who can't take his eyes off the thing.
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