The first challenge was packing. I've always hated packing. Too many decisions! And Miss Elena added her own twist to the process by taking out of the suitcase whatever I would put in. Needless to say, it took forever. She also enjoyed "packing" herself in the suitcase.
"Ma, don't forget me!"
At one point I had decided to bring her little booster seat so I had it folded up in the suitcase and she crawled over, unfolded the seat, and climbed in! I love how she looks so proud of herself in these pics.
(You may also notice the coffee stain on her left arm. She got a hold of my half empty coffee cup on the side table and spilled some everywhere before I grabbed it. She was a busy beaver that day!)
I realized the morning we were leaving that I needed the bigger suitcase, so I transferred everything over and then brought it downstairs for the last few items that weren't going to fit in the diaper bag. I closed the top of the suitcase so Elena wouldn't take everything out (again!), but didn't zip it closed, and left it near the front door, so of course Lenny grabbed the handle and everything fell out! But that was really our only major oops that morning. All in all I'd say we did pretty well.
For anyone wanting to fly in for a visit, Providence airport is great. Nice and small and easy to get to. It's not even in Providence! We got there in plenty of time and Lenny left me, Elena, the stroller, our carry ons (diaper bag and purse) and one giant suitcase that we were checking at the terminal. He went to park the car and came back with the other giant suitcase. We printed our boarding passes, checked the bags, and went over to security. This was a little bit of a process because we still had the stroller (checked it at the gate) and that had to be folded up and passed through, along with all of our bags, coats, shoes, etc. As we are doing all this, one of the security people tell us to take off the baby's coat and slippers too! Can you believe it? Whatever. We got through all that and found our gate. They had a nice family section with a little table and a TV with the Disney channel on. We gave her yogurt and ate our sandwiches and I changed her in the airport bathroom before we boarded, nursed her on the plane as soon as we started moving, and she slept a total of ZERO minutes! She did ok though.
We landed in Orlando, which is a HUGE airport (read: you have to take a tram to the baggage claim) and as we were leaving the security check-in looked ridiculous, so I was not looking forward to the trip back, but it was actually not bad at all. They had a separate lane for stroller check-ins so we walked right up and at least sort of knew what we were doing. The only major difference with the return flight experience was that after I changed her before boarding she decided to poop, so I ran back to change her again and then mid-flight she pooped AGAIN and Lenny changed her in the tiny bathroom on the plane! Major points for that one.
More pics to come...
WOW! Congrats on your first plane flight with the munchkin. Sounds like you handled things beautifully. :)
ReplyDeleteSounds like quite the adventure! Looking forward to more pics.
ReplyDeleteI just put my Allen-boy in my suitcase and tried to convince him to come home with me. I even got it part of the way zipped and it was only a roll-aboard!
ReplyDeleteHe didn't want to come. He did want the Cars and Handy Manny coloring things I had for him.
Sounds like you had a good time. Did you the Disney thing?