First Plane Trip March 28, 2012! ZBL took his first plane trip from to Austin on Thursday March 28. John had to work unfortunately, but SPL had spring break so we took off for the week (plus we were having work done on our house so that was also a motivator – it was going to be LOUD :-/). All in all, the flight went well. I ended up buying Z a seat so we could have the entire row on the outbound flight (the return was a small commuter plane that was 2X2). And since I booked his seat after I got SPL’s and mine, I had to talk to a human to get the transaction taken care of . Turns out that was a mistake! I ended up with assigned seats together for SPL and me and ZBL seated a few rows in front! Whuck!?!??! United is *the worst* – not even worth getting the cheaper fare. But eventually we did get the seats straightened out (same thing happened on the return flight and good karma was on our side. Turns out the seat across the aisle from us that we wanted was occupied by a gentleman with some mental disabilities. I took the opportunity to tell SPL a story about how my Uncle Donny, who had Downs Syndrome, used to fly home to Atlanta to visit my grandmother for the summer and holidays. And this lovely man happily swapped seats with us. Thank you to him! As you can see from the above photos, there were many phases of this trip. The first was curiosity. I had just buckled ZBL into his seat and turned around to talk to SPL for a minute & when I turned back around (maybe a minute had passed, tops) Z had the seat belt unbuckled. Now with my sieve-for-a brain I thought, maybe I didn’t secure the belt? So I did it again and found out that no, Z figured out how to unbuckle the seatbelt lickety split! Glad the 5 point harness for his carseat is more complicated! The second phase was friendly flirtiness. He looked around the cabin and found people who would wave with him. They were pleasantly surprised by this cute baby who was playing with them and it passed the time for ZBL as well :-) The third phase was tired so that brought with it the fussiness. On the outbound trip Z did great on take off and only fussed a bit as it was nap time. He quickly went to sleep and slept for 1.5 hours of the flight. Awesome. The return was a bit bumpier as he didn’t want to nap for longer than 40 mins but we were headed home so I figured, we’ll work it all out when we get back to our house. Thankfully he maintained a good mood despite getting less sleep than he needed.

May 11, 2013 · PHOTO

First Plane Trip March 28, 2012!

ZBL took his first plane trip from to Austin on Thursday March 28. John had to work unfortunately, but SPL had spring break so we took off for the week (plus we were having work done on our house so that was also a motivator – it was going to be LOUD :-/). All in all, the flight went well. I ended up buying Z a seat so we could have the entire row on the outbound flight (the return was a small commuter plane that was 2X2). And since I booked his seat after I got SPL’s and mine, I had to talk to a human to get the transaction taken care of . Turns out that was a mistake! I ended up with assigned seats together for SPL and me and ZBL seated a few rows in front! Whuck!?!??! United is *the worst* – not even worth getting the cheaper fare. But eventually we did get the seats straightened out (same thing happened on the return flight and good karma was on our side. Turns out the seat across the aisle from us that we wanted was occupied by a gentleman with some mental disabilities. I took the opportunity to tell SPL a story about how my Uncle Donny, who had Downs Syndrome, used to fly home to Atlanta to visit my grandmother for the summer and holidays. And this lovely man happily swapped seats with us. Thank you to him!

As you can see from the above photos, there were many phases of this trip. The first was curiosity. I had just buckled ZBL into his seat and turned around to talk to SPL for a minute & when I turned back around (maybe a minute had passed, tops) Z had the seat belt unbuckled. Now with my sieve-for-a brain I thought, maybe I didn’t secure the belt? So I did it again and found out that no, Z figured out how to unbuckle the seatbelt lickety split! Glad the 5 point harness for his carseat is more complicated!

The second phase was friendly flirtiness. He looked around the cabin and found people who would wave with him. They were pleasantly surprised by this cute baby who was playing with them and it passed the time for ZBL as well :-)

The third phase was tired so that brought with it the fussiness. On the outbound trip Z did great on take off and only fussed a bit as it was nap time. He quickly went to sleep and slept for 1.5 hours of the flight. Awesome.

The return was a bit bumpier as he didn’t want to nap for longer than 40 mins but we were headed home so I figured, we’ll work it all out when we get back to our house. Thankfully he maintained a good mood despite getting less sleep than he needed.