Thursday, January 4, 2018

Traveling the world with our family, well here's our reality folks


We love to go on vacations to many places as a family, but reality is that we cant go everywhere, it is just too complicated.
We recently were able to finally get Braydon on a plane ride. This was the scenario. We flew to go to Disneyland. Most may know this, but in case you don't Braydon has a problem with laughter. It causes him to get upset and start to kick and want to be out of earshot of the laughter. Very hard thing to have such a hard time with since it is such a normal thing for us all to do. So think of being stuck in a plane with someone who has laughed and to Braydon he will wait and anticipate the next laugh so much that he will freak out and want away from that person immediately.(This has been the hardest thing to work with on him and it still is a work in progress) Also Braydon is too big to sit in a car seat on the plane(at least his seat his too large to fit in a airline seat) so Justin had to sit next to him and have an arm around him the entire flight, constantly pulling him up as he would slide down in the seat. He did this for the entire 2 1/2 flight, Justin is amazing, but gosh that stinks because I don't think we could do it any longer than that. Renting a car isn't easy either one that will accommodate his large car seat and wheelchair plus our entire family?? Hotel rooms. He usually requires a his own bed and I found these really cool portable bed rails that keep him from rolling off the bed: Find them here  Then there is bathing him. We use a roll in shower with a special shower seat at home, which is not easily transportable. So trying to bathe super strong 5 foot tall kid is never easy. I say all this but want you to realize that Braydon has seen and done more things in his life than a lot of kids his age, let alone with his disability. We somehow make it work. We have too, we have other members of our family too and need to be there for everyone of them. So traveling with our family is doable not easily but can somehow be done.
UPDATE EXCITEMENT!!!!
We all(7 of us) went to Disneyland in October and Braydon has grown so much that he is able to sit in an airline seat with his feet touching the floor, so he basically sat all alone support wise. Also our check-in gate attendant suggested we take the first row, leg room a plenty no one in front of him to kick their seat. It was amazing!!! This is a total game changer for us. Just need to figure out some of the other items mentioned that would make it a little easier for us when we travel.