Rheagan, Lucas and I just got back from a 6 day trip to San Diego to visit Lucas’ Great Grandma Mugsy and Great-Grand-Uncle-Dick. The trip was loads of fun. Great Grandma Mugsy made sure that all three of us were spoiled the entire time.
For the most part, the little monster was good traveling company. However, at the beginning of the return flight home he fired through 4 diapers in a 50 minute period. Rheagan and I had a few moments of panic as we counted only 4 diapers left in the bag for the remaining 5 hours of flying/layover time. Thankfully Lucas only loaded up one more time until we got home. Although, that last diaper change turned out to be quite the adventure.
Here is the play by play: It was about 20 after noon and we had been in the air about 15 minutes. Rheagan was enjoying the bird’s eye view of the California Desert from her window seat while I was warming the middle seat and busily transcribing Dante’s Devine Comedy from Latin into Aramaic (.… actually, I was reading a comic book). Lucas was being as cute as possible and was fast asleep in Rheagan’s lap. The plane, an Air Bus A-300, was still gaining altitude and would occasionally cruise into a little turbulence. The plane would make a rapid thumping and clattering noise in an effort to escape each gust of wind or change in outside pressure. All of the travelers seemed to take the commotion in stride and continued to read their books and fiddle with their various electronic devices. After one of the stronger thumping turbulence episodes, Lucas popped his eyes wide open, bent his head back and gave Rheagan and I a smug little grin. I was immediately suspicious of the little man’s grin but I decided that it meant nothing of consequence and continued with my.....transcription. A short moment later, the Captain called on the intercom to say that the turbulence had passed and that it was now “ok to move about freely in the cabin”.
However, Lucas wasn’t happy with the Captain’s decree and decided to create a bit of turbulence of his own. A multi-second long thumping sound emanated from Lucas’ posterior. Lucas’ smug grin became even smugger. Turns out he had been secretly packing poo into his diapers with each episode of turbulence. Rheagan sighed and I scowled.....and then we giggled. It was very apparent that Lucas needed to have special cleaning services. I asked the lady sitting in the isle seat to get up so that I could get up and pull the diaper bag from the cabin’s over head storage bin. As I was doing this I noticed that the line to the restroom was backed up by about 5 people. In light of the line, the isle-seat-lady offered to let us change Lucas in her seat. We thanked her and went to work. With two of on the job, things moved quickly.
Everything was going as planned when all of the sudden I noticed that the little man had turned on his personal fire-hose. I blocked the hosing with the lightning reflexes, that only a father has, and at first the damage appeared to be very minimal. We continued with the special cleaning service. Towards the end as we were buttoning up Lucas’ outfit we noticed that there was a whole lot of wet on his back side. On closer inspection, it turns out that Lucas had managed to keep his hose on underneath the cloth diaper that I had used to block the initial barrage. “O dear!” we both thought.
We then changed Lucas’ outfit and picked up him only to find out that there was a 6” x 6” pool of liquid in the seat. The seat that belonged to the stranger...... :) God bless parenthood!
The three of us will be in South Western Virginia in 2 days time and will, for the most part, remain there until about the 5th of July. Lucas’ Christening may or may-not happen on the 4th of July....I have had a bit of difficulty in trying to communicate with the Church. More to come on that.... ~ Cheers
Did anyone see these things? 
I can think of few things stranger than an insect that only comes out once every 17 years for a 20 day period of time. To bad we can’t convince mosquitoes to behave in a similar fashion…
These wierdos didn’t show up in our part of North Carolina, and I was worried that I would see any of these fickle insects. But thankfully I caught the very last of the stragglers in Maryland yesterday morning while Rheagan and I were running. They were looking pretty tired. The only live one that I saw was skipping and crashing across the road as though it was a rock skipping across water. It was a rather pathetic site…
Here are a couple of good links:
National Geographic
CicadaMania.net
Friday was my last day of work at Seymour Johnson AFB. And now Rheagan, Lucas and I are officially on vacation. Yup, 3 whole weeks of R&R is tough to beat. Especially considering that with only one exception, we haven’t taken more than 5 or 6 days off in the last 3 years. Uncle Sam likes to make folks into workaholics....
Also, Rheagan turned 21 yesterday. Woohoo! Feel free to drop her a note at: rheagan@frantzworkshop.com
