Little Kids, Big City: Tales from a Real House in New York City (With Lessons on Life and Love for Your Own Concrete Jungle) by Alex McCord, Simon van Kempen Read Free Book Online Page A

internet gossip fodder, I wondered whether people would notice them on the flight and watch them hoping for antics. Sure enough, a discussion topic on a parenting website surfaced the day after we arrived in Australia—the husband of one of the moms who frequented this blog was on our flight. He dutifully e-mailed his wife, who was most disappointed that the only thing to report after flying halfway around the world with us was that I made a comment to François about his bag carrying the logo of a recently defunct investment bank, and that Alex’s jeans apparently had a shiny credit card-like thing on her rump. Other moms on the site were desperate for news of our rowdy boys on this 24-hour flight, but alas, as they’d neither been rude nor unruly, her husband said that there was nothing to report. However, his wife did write as a way of an excuse, that her husband took drugs to knock himself out so he would have missed their bad behavior anyway. We can happily report that her drugged-up husband missed no antics—well, from our boys anyway.
     
    Alex
    On the way back home, we sat behind a family that bought two seats for three kids. I’m all for saving money where you can, but let me put on my how-to hat for just a second and say unless it tips the scale between going on the trip versus staying home, DON’T DO THAT. After our kids were about nine to 12 months old, we always bought them a seat. I would rather get seats for everyone in a cheaper class of service than share a first- or business-class seat with any child big enough to wiggle. Anyway, on the flight from Sydney back to Los Angeles, two of the kids in the family ahead of us were really acting up. The 18-month-old was systematically torturing his parents into insanity, and just when he fell asleep, his sister stood up over her mother on the seat and started banging on the headrest, shouting something that really sounded like, “Die! Die!” It may have been “Cry” or “Hi” or “Pie,” but at that point I’d been awake for so many hours all I could do was cross my fingers that no one would think those temporarily demonic children belonged to us.
    Of course in between the flights to and from Australia, we did spend two weeks on the ground there. It was the first trip for Johan and the first trip François was old enough to remember, and we had a wonderful time with family. One thing I hadn’t counted on was a reminder that television can in fact be educational for kids. When we looked out our hotel window in Sydney, both boys immediately recognized the Sydney Opera House and Harbour. François had seen photos of himself there as a baby, but how did Johan know? From watching The Wiggles . Far be it from me to advocate TV for kids, but moderation is everything and both Simon and I were tickled to see that the kids knew exactly where they were. They had a little trouble grasping that we couldn’t take a taxi from there to Coober Pedy, but nevermind, at least they knew what it was. That François learned from Priscilla, Queen of the Desert , an educational film in oh-so-many ways.
    Long trips with young children require quite a lot of planning, but when I think back to our early trips with babies, it was really all about knowing how much or little to pack. Comparatively, traveling with an infant was easy. We took François overseas when he was less than two weeks old, and the only drama was making sure we got his passport issued in time. Knowing that in New York City it was unlikely we’d have the official birth certificate by then, we got a letter issued at the hospital confirming the birth, allowing us to get a temporary passport, which was good for a year. It was only after they were out of babyhood and able to walk and talk that flying became a little more complicated. This also coincided with the ever-strengthening security measures each time another terrorist attack was thwarted—and once the boys had tapered off nursing I remembered madly pouring