Flying around the world with two little kids proves to be an exhausting test for Nic Hamilton's sanity - and for his marriage.
The cabin lights are out because everyone is asleep. Everyone that is, except my 2-year-old daughter, who is standing on the armrest in the middle aisle of an A380, the world's largest passenger plane, singing Do-Re-Mi from The Sound of Music at the top of her lungs.
I pull her down, but with every attempt, she goes into a defiant squeal that jolts people awake. And she's mastered the ability to anchor herself by holding the seats in such a way that she becomes impossible to move.
When I finally wrestle her down, she knees me on my full bladder. I wonder, briefly, where you could hide a body on a passenger plane. Instead, I implore her in a pathetic, begging voice, to be quiet. It doesn't work because she's 2 and she's bored as all hell. Instead, she jumps on her sleeping 4-year-old sister, who starts wailing.
We're only five hours in and there's still eight-and-a-half hours to go. I stare at my wife with a crazed look, which could be interpreted as me blaming her for being halfway responsible for bringing these two demons into the world.