Sunday, December 02, 2007

Off We Go

Thursday we fly to Florida. First time flying for Lauren. I have been soliciting and looking up advice. I found this piece of advice very amusing:

Wear spunky clothes and dark glasses so that other passengers think you are someone famous enjoying quality time with your kids.

As if.

Besides, even if I were on a flight with Julia Roberts and Hazel was kicking my seat, I'd still be highly annoyed.

Other than that, lots of other good advice - like lollipops, crayons, portable dvd (we MUST have Shrek), colorful band aids, valium (for me, not Lauren)...

When we got the tickets, Lauren was a couple months younger, we didn't get her a seat, figured she'd be fine on our laps... in this short span she has become more defiant, more vocal, doing that "I will straighten out and stiffen up like a board so you cannot strap me in to my carseat" thing... so we got scared... and bought her a seat... but we are still scared. I may need to be medicated, since Daddy won't let me give Little L Benadryl for no good reason.

More advice is welcome!

2 comments:

Elaine said...

Hi - I enjoy your blog and felt I could maybe offer something useful here. I just got back from a plane trip with my nearly 2 year old daughter. I traveled alone one way & with my husband the other. I got her her own seat - no car seat which was Here are some of the things that worked for us:

Even though I brought a bunch of little toys, she was most content to draw with markers and "read" her fave Dr. Seuss book.

Lysol (some variation there of) wipes - too many germs in the airplane so I wipe everything.

Ear drops - our pediatrician gave us a script.

Wear her out: my daughter really likes those moving walkways so we did at least a mile on one of those - she was pleasantly worn out by the time we were in the air. When she was hungry before taking off, we "picniced" on the floor so she didn't have to sit in a chair longer than necessary.

ipod - she listened to her fave pop tunes and wee hairy beasties...also if you watch tv - having some of the familiar sitcom theme songs may make for a novel experience (it did for us). This was the best traveling tool overall for us...whether in the car, on the plane or somewhere where she didn't want to be, music saved the day.

I dressed her in layers - a cute dress over cute elastic pants so she could move comfortably and was also easy to change standing up. I do think people are much nicer to you when you and your kid look put together...I felt people were extremely helpful and making my kid as cute as possible had to have helped a wee bit.

Shoes - One airport required my daughter to have her shoes taken off. Even though she wore velcro closing shoes, I wasn't prepared and felt very rushed as people behind me were backed up.

Sling - I used a sling which was terrific - it also doubled as a little blanket.

I brought way more food and crap than necessary. Adele would have probably been content to draw, play with my jewelry and go through my purse but juggling her and all the junk was stressful.

A small kids' backpack! On the way back, someone gave her one and in it, I put some of her gear and toys and that helped a lot.

More anecdotes on my lj that may be useful, if not mildly entertaining- http://seaskysand.livejournal.com/tag/travel

Good Luck!
Elaine

Anonymous said...

Ooh, elaine, THANK YOU SO SO MUCH!!! - tina