the flight home

It was the one thing we were dreading, the long trip home. Not-so-fun cramming into coach seats for hrs on end, interspersed with waiting in uncomfortable chairs at various airport gates.

In the flight plans, we tried to make it as easy as possible, but there is no direct flight from SLC to Addis Ababa. Nope, the route we found was to fly round trip to Europe on Delta, then embed a round trip in between to Addis on Ethiopian Air. So the trip home with fresh baby in hand, was 7 hrs to frankfurt, 4 hrs in airport, 9 hrs to Cincinati, 2 hrs in airport, 4 hrs to SLC. It was a long 30 hr journey, with very little sleep.

In planing for this epic, we dedicated one of our carry-on backpacks to baby stuff. I thought Wiffy's kitchen sink approach to baby stuff was a bit excessive, but man, was I wrong.

We had oodles of baby wipes (80 count). 5 changes of clothes. Big tube of butt cream. 35 baggies of formula. 3 bottles, and 30 + hours where just about anything could happen....oh yeah, and a fat bag of #3 diapers (30 count). Irritated at Christy's apparent excessiveness. I stuffed these items into my carry-on as best as I could. Fat bulging bags (added with all the gift and trinket items purchased in Ethiopia), we made for a bogged down caravan in the airports.How many diapers do you think it takes to travel for 25+ hrs?

By my calculations from Little Poopers discharge frequency (approx. one diaper 2.5 hrs), I came up with 10-ish diapers needed. In our baggage we exceeded this by 2.5 fold. One would think that would be excessive ....Right? Well Little Pooper (his nickname, a bit of a misnomer), proved to me the value of wiffery excessiveness. Our little champ consumed the diapers with gusto. He was so prodigious in fact, some events were not fully contained. He soiled 4 outfits. We changed him wherever we could. We changed him in airport bathrooms......
We changed him on airline toilets. When we could not get access to airline lavatory, we changed him in our laps. Little Pooper burned up 28 daipers! That is nearly one per hour, a phenomenal frequency! When we hit the ground in SLC, we were relieved. Relieved to be home. Relieved at the soon prospect of real sleep. Relieved of nearly all items in one carry-on bag.