We planned at 5-day trip. 2 travel days and 3 baseball games. And we got excited. We figured spring training would be daytime, outdoor and somewhat noisy activities, so very baby friendly.
We managed to pack for all four of us in one suitcase to check. That even included diapers (which we left for the end and just stuffed where we had extra space), two gloves (for foul balls) and most of the baby food they would need (we snagged a few bananas at breakfast to supplement what we brought).
We didn't buy extra seats for the babies, so they traveled as lap infants. The fun fact about lap babies is that you can only have one per row on one side of the aisle. That's because there is only one extra oxygen mask per seat grouping. And some rows don't have extra masks, we've been told, so you have to ask the right person to get you in the right seats. And the right person is not everyone who works for the airline. Not even the ones who get to wear the fancy jackets. It pretty much means the people at the gate. You know the ones. The ones who have about a million things to do before the flight takes off and they have timed their arrival at the gate down to the minute so that they are constantly doing something and only take care of "situations" at the gate with much frantic typing.
D dropped Oma, the twins and me off at the curb while he parked the car. Oma and I loaded each baby in an umbrella stroller, slung a car seat on the back of each one (hanging it over the handles), grabbed our carry-ons and headed to the counter to check the bag. So far, so good. D dropped off the car and met us at security with his carry-ons. We each had a backpack diaper bag (since we would each have a baby and sit in different rows, we figured it would be good for us to each have our own supplies). The backpack is key. It probably doesn't win us any fashion points, but fashion is not important when you carry around twins. Nobody pays attention to the adults, anyway.
Security took a little longer than normal, but I thought we did pretty well. Not sure if the people behind us would agree, but we weren't any slower than the guy who has to take off his belt and empty 5 pockets, take out his computer, untie his shoes... Plus, the security personnel in Houston were fantastic at helping move us through. They took all our liquids for the babies (and extra water to hydrate the nursing mom) to a special machine to check them out. They did that while we loaded up our gear. They were very clear in their instructions to us about putting all the stuff through the machine, carrying the babies through the metal detector, etc. Kinda weird hearing good things about airport security, huh?!
On the other side, everything loaded, we headed to the gate.
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