A Series of Unfortunate Events

Okay, why didn't any of you tell us how difficult it was traveling with kids? (Yes, you, I'm pointing my finger at all of you who have little kids and travel often with them.) You all make it seem so easy, I'm not even sure I've heard you complain about the 20 hour flights, either. Maximo was very good on our long 22 hour journey from Peru to Connecticut. It's amazing how we've gone from "cat-napping, People reading, carefree" travelers to "here, take him, he's bored with me, he's about to explode, do you think he can make it until we land to feed, change his diaper, etc.?" travelers in the span of a year.
Okay, so our traveling day, gone bad (though not horrible)...
Scene 1: Continental Flight Lima to Newark
We get priority boarding with Maximo, get on and try to sort our three carry-ons and get the carseat installed. The rest of the plane boards. This women from the row in front of us looks back at us, then leans into the man sitting next to her, "Oh, great, there's a baby in the row behind us." I've felt this before, though I'm tired and seething at her comment and want A. Max to scream so she has no sleep, but even better B. Act like an angel so we can prove her wrong.
We left Peru pretty much on time (about 11 pm on Saturday night). Maximo was wide awake and had been since his nap at 1:00 pm -this had us worried. He just really enjoys looking around at people and didn't want to miss a thing. We figured once we got on the plane, he'd hopefully drink milk and fall asleep. Well, they decided to serve dinner at 1:00 am and the lights in the cabin actually stayed on until 2:00 am. He fussed a bit, refused to go in his car seat, which we had on the plane, though it blocked me from leaving my seat. So, we awkwardly dozed with Max in our arms, and finally at about 3:00 am he went into his car seat until about 5:45. Then he was awake, looking around, being quite sweet, until about 15 minutes before landing, when he lost the plot and hollered until we landed.
Scene 2: Newark Airport, located coincidently in the "armpit area" (New England being the arm) on the east coast. We had a 5 hour layover in Newark, so we stretched our legs, ate breakfast, and let Maximo play on the a blanket in the terminal. We saw another flight going to Providence an hour earlier, so we attempted to get on to that, but it was a delayed flight from 8:30 am and kept getting kicked back, and last we saw was supposed to leave 10 minutes before we were departing, whether or it did or not, we don't know.
So, we had to take two mini shuttles to get to our gate - this is not easy to manuever in the heat, and with all the stairs (with three bags, a stroller and a baby). It was one of those commuter terminals where small flights go out every 15 minutes or so. It was hotter than Haiti in the terminal, and our flight got delayed about an hour. This was inconvenient to say the least, with a baby, who you are carefully planning out meltdown points, food, naps, heating a bottle properly, it really put a wrench in things.
We get on the little plane, Max and I together (in separate seats) with John behind us. The stewardess twice tried to give away Maximo's purchased seat. Finally, in the air, after another 20 minutes of being on the plane because a mechanic had to come on to fix a broken seat, we taxied on the runway for another 15 minutes. We then were in the air to Providence. It's a 35 minute flight to Providence, so we were getting giddy because our trip was almost over. About 5 minutes left in our flight the pilot spoke,
"Folks, I've got some bad news. The plane landing before us on the runway popped a tire and there's debris on the runway, so we have to circle Providence while they clean it up. They say it'll only be five minutes. I'll get back to you if I hear anything else. Sorry for another delay."
By this point, Max was hanging on, but we were really running out of things to do. He had already ripped the Sky Miles catalog to shreds and was getting really antsy.
"Ummm, folks, they say it's going to be another 15 minutes. There's still debris on the runway."
Okay, we're already thinking it's probably bigger than he's explaining to us. I'm starting to worry that there was a major plane crash before our flight, maybe even the other Newark flight and my mom's having a coronary because she's checking the in-flight status every five minutes online.
Two minutes later, we land. As we were taxiing to the terminal, we saw a bunch of fire trucks and ambulances around a P-51 Mustang (a WWII fighter plane). Come to find out, the crosswinds were too much for it and it tipped its wing down and it hit the ground and popped a tire, and whatever else.
As we were getting off the plane, there were two other pilots on our plane who had spoken to our pilot. I heard them saying that if we had to wait another 5 minutes, they were going to re-route us to Boston because we were running out of fuel.
Scene 3 - Providence Airport
We go to the baggage claim. John gets a cart for all of our stuff. We wait, mind you there are only about 25 other people on the plane with us. We get the car seat off the conveyor belt, it goes round and round, then comes to a stop. Nothing else of ours is there. Great! Just what we need. Maximo at this point is getting fussy, he's exhausted and hungry. I give Maximo a bottle while John deals with the baggage issue. They tell us, hopefully it'll be on the next flight to Providence, which will get in around 6 pm. We did see our bags in Newark, we had to take them through customs. We even had to go through the damn Agricultural claims area/line/check because John insisted on bringing carrot sticks from Peru as a snack... We checked the car seat in at this point in Newark, because it was so big on the "no-leg room" Continental planes. Luckily, this was the bag that made it to us, because it would have made getting home from the airport interesting.
Now, I'm thinking in the back of my mind. We're two hours later than expected, I hope they still have our car at the rental counter. Really the way things were going, I figured they would have given it away. John starts sorting through the reservation sheet and pulling out his US license. He pulls out his license to see that it EXPIRED 3 months ago. All I'm thinking at this time is, "Are you frickin' kidding me?" My license has expired, but we were aware of this. So, I huff (that's the passive thing I do when I'm angry/frustrated) and ask John for US change to call my mom to come pick us up. As I wheel Maximo over to the pay phones (which take me 3 minutes to find because who uses a pay phone nowadays?). Across from the pay phone is the transportation desk, with a sign that says, Taxi Service to Anywhere. Really? We were going to Mystic, Connecticut, about a 45 minute drive away. So, I ask the lady behind the counter, and she told me it would be $130. I' m thinking that is possible, but it'd take my mom about an hour to get there, and if Max didn't melt down before then, I would.
I walk back to find John and the Budget counter to report the taxi information. He glared at me. It was the "don't say anything" glare. We got the car! The girl behind the counter just glanced at his license and didn't say anything. She was about 21 and was more worried about getting back to the food she was eating. So we cooly walk away from the counter outside to our car. We had to go to another counter outside, where we held our breath again and hoped they wouldn't ask for the license. They handed over the keys, and we quickly got in the car. (Okay, back to Max, this blog is about him, isn't it? He was pretty fussy this whole time, not full-out screaming, but doing his whiny-crying thing.) I reach down into the stroller to put him in the car seat, and he's passed out. He slept the whole way to Connecticut. Where we arrived all in one piece... with 22 hours of travel grime caked to us, with no clean clothes, but nothing but vacation time ahead of us. And, 3 hours later, we even got all of our luggage.
Since this post turned out to be a mini-novel, I'll write more later about how our trip is going. It's been great. Here's some pictures.