A Day in the Life of My Little Brood: Have Baby Will Travel

I made it through another air travel experience with a baby! Hooray! We spent the weekend in the Boston area celebrating the recent marriage of my brother and sister-in-law, and it was a great time. As you would expect, it was a complete whirlwind experience but totally worth the trip. Got some much needed time with my awesome family, complete with bust-a-gut laughing, sweet niece and nephew dance moves and top-of-your-lungs singing to classic 80's tunes. I have to admit, though that the weekend served as confirmation that having two kids has killed more brain cells than all of that irresponsible behavior I displayed in college and my early 20's. It's a really good thing the party was in the same building as the room we spent the night in because every time I left our room, I had to look at (and repeat to myself, in an effort to memorize) our room number....and I had basically one glass of wine all night, so I can't even say it's because I was drunk. I have no idea what the name of the hotel was, and I'm not entirely sure what town (city?) we were actually in. I'm serious. Thank goodness I had a crowd of people to follow around and/or tell me what to do and where to go so I didn't end up wandering the nearby mall looking for the dance floor.

Anyway, Nathan and I took separate planes because originally it was going to be just me and the baby going. By the time we found out Nathan and Zoe could come too, tickets on the same flight were around $400 more expensive! So, separate planes it was...the way there for me and Owen was pretty uneventful. Not great, not horrible so not much to complain about but, I have to say the way home was....I can't exactly say "enjoyable" because I don't think air travel with babies is EVER that great but it was really okay. I attribute this to a few things, and for future trips I plan on trying to repeat the things that were semi-controllable and cross my fingers for the things that we lucked out on this time around:

1) Instead of sitting in the back, in the window seat which is my usual preference I sat in the very front row, aisle seat. (Extra leg space and close proximity to the bathroom.)

2) The people around me were really understanding and extremely friendly about the baby thing. Usually, I find that people don't acknowledge me or the kids until we land. It's almost like no one wants to jinx anything so they wait until the end to tell me how well my kids behaved.

3) No one made me feel like an exhibitionist for nursing. This was especially important today because after a crazy weekend being woken up constantly and not having a good solid nap for 3 days, Owen's pattern on the plane was: nurse for 15 minutes, nap for 15-30 minutes, wake up and be happy for 15-30 minutes, start to get fussy for 10 minutes, nurse for 15 minutes, nap for...and then when we were landing, his ears started hurting so he was getting really fussy, and the only thing that calmed him down was..you guessed it!

4) At some point in the middle of the trip, I asked the flight attendant how much time we had left. I was hoping she was going to say 45 minutes or an hour but she said 2 1/2 HOURS! So, I tried telling myself we had just taken off and that the flight was only 2 1/2 hours long (an amount of time on a plane with a baby that feels totally doable to me). It (kind of) helped!

5) The flight attendant stationed nearest to me helped distract Owen and made him smile whenever she got a chance. I attribute this to sitting up front, too...the attendant that is stationed up there can see you clearly and doesn't leave the front of the plane very often. I think it's nice for them, too to have a baby to smile at (if they happen to like kids, of course).

6) My friend Mariah picked me up at the airport. Since Nathan and Zoe's plane came in a whole 3 hours after mine, it was nice to be able to just head on home instead of waiting at the airport for them, especially since I got home around bedtime for Owen. Plus, Mariah and I got to chat in the car with no big kids interrupting us every 30 seconds!

So, although I was kind of dreading the trip home today we lived through it and I managed to stay almost stress free. Yay!

Here are some photos from the party--enjoy! Congrats Ike and Sandy!!