Saturday, May 17, 2008

Flying with Owen

I totally forget to mention how Owen did on the flights. Thanks Sarah for reminding me. The fact that I didn't say something like "...and all the while Owen was screaming his head off.", in my nightmare flight story, should be a good indicator. He did great!

We are so lucky to have this kid. He was so good through the entire thing from the minute we stepped into the airport until we got our bags. It must be mentioned that both of our flights were past 8:00pm which made it easy to get Owen to sleep. On the first flight, he slept pretty much the entire time. On our flight back, he was awake enough to look out the window during take off and make friends with the dad (thank god!) sitting next to us. He really loved the speed of the plane on the runway.

As good as he was, we were armed to the teeth with baby tamers. Touch and feel books, his Elmo remote control, a portable DVD player with his favorite videos and yes - get out the bad parent award - a sucker. We tried the DVD player because he got a little fussy about 15 minutes into our return flight. However, in the grand tradition of electronic reliability, the batteries went dead about 7 minutes in. It was supposedly fully charged. The whole row noticed that the DVD screen went black and everyone held their breath, waiting for the enevitable wail of displeasure. Luckily, it never came. We moved on the the grandaddy of all shutter uppers - the bottle.

I was very surprised to see so many children on both of our flights. It's as if the late flight is a underground baby secret that you must figure out for yourself, like some sort of ancient rite of parenthood. It was nice to have other parents on the plane. I defintely didn't get any "Oh, crap! What sort of moron would bring a baby on a plane?" stares.

Here's Owen at Jose Cuervo's Tequilla Grill in the airport. Travel Tip # 131 - Never eat Mexican before stepping on a plane. Travel Tip #1 - NEVER feed your kid Mexican before putting him on a plane.

3 comments:

Kim said...

Well ok first off-Owen's pictures-no words for the cuteness. Second, I am very very impressed with the flight. Preston was 16 months for his first flight. On the return flight he fell asleep over Giants Stadium (or roughly ten minutes prior to landing). That's why Preston is not coming to Ireland. So GO OWEN! Now to read the rest of your vacation blog! Happy to have you back!

The Johnson Family 5 said...

Way to go Owen! I'm getting really worried for our flight next month! That last time Cole flew back in Feb. he wasn't really mobile...now he's a crawling machine!! I have no clue how he's going to want to sit in my lap for 3 hours! ughhh! Wish us luck!

Sarah said...

I'm so glad to hear it went so well Cat! I figured when you hadn't mentioned it, it was either really great or really horrible and you didn't want to say anything ;) Your comment about bad mom- bringing the sucker..then I really deserve that award because we took Will to the allergist (he freaks out at doctors) and I knew they were either going to do a skin test, blood test or both- so I stocked up on suckers, M&M's, the portable dvd player (they say expect your visit to last 3 hours!) and kit kats...after the skin test so that he wouldn't itch himself I gave him 2 suckers to hold onto- one for each hand...therefore, I am not one to judge :)
Anyway- so glad it went well. Owen is adorable. You are a great writer and so good at making us laugh in your post!