Well, LB took his first airplane ride last Saturday. Daddy dropped us off at the airport around 9:30 Saturday morning for our 10:30 flight. Daddy also discovered that if you set the carseat (britax marathon) right on top of the stroller (Graco metrolite), it sits there nice and solid and doesn't seem inclined to tip or fall off or anything-solved one of my major worries-how would I handle the car seat and the stroller. Next time, just to be safe, I'll bungee it in, but I'd left the bungees at home this trip. And LB looked as if he was sitting on a throne, he was so high off the ground and everything. Wish I'd taken a picture of it!!

So we curbside checked our one big bag (I was truly appalled at the size of the bag we took, but it included blanket, piggy, 20 cloth diapers, baby monitor, etc...) then we headed into the airport. As much as people told me that they'd let me not run the stroller through the x-ray machine and just wand it, they were unwilling. SO I had to pull LB out of the car seat, which irritated him (mostly he wanted his blanket) and then they had to help pile everything on the belt and then help me reassemble on the other side. It really wasn't all that bad and everyone was pretty helpful, pathetic looking mom traveling alone with 2 year old usually gets you lots of help.

We wandered to the gate and asked about gate checking the stroller-which they were happy to do. They tagged it and then we had some time to kill. Rather than wait in the crowded area around this gate, we went one gate over and discovered a bead table (the wires with beads on them). That kept LB occupied for most of the rest of the time, except when I interrupted him to have him look at planes taking off or coming in.

When it was close to time to board we wandered over and waited. They let us preboard-if there were two of us I'd have had one pre-board with the car seat to install it and then have the other board as late as possible with LB to cut down on his waiting time. They took his car seat up to the plane and I took him up. Getting the seat belted into the seat was not exactly fun for me, it was tough but I got it decently done, if not amazingly well done. Then I popped LB into the seat and we were ready to go.

For the ascent and descent I had two things for him, fruit leather and his straw cup. They apparently worked OK, since he didn't complain about the ascent at all. He happily ate the leather and then drank some of his water. We read a couple of books and ate some snacks that I'd brought. I had to apologize to the flight crew when we got to San Jose because I accidentally dumped a bunch of goldfish crackers on the floor. But at least it was me and not LB who did it. Then we had our airline provided snack- I learned that LB loves peanuts. After I finished my cup of water, he decided that it would be fun to play with. He's discovered that it was fun to make various sounds with the cup over his mouth.

On the descent into San Jose (yes, we flew from Burbank to San Jose-a nice short flight for the first one) I think his ears bugged him a bit as he was covering them, but he didn't complain and when I asked if his ears hurt he didn't say that they did. So we got off of the plane and collected the gate checked stroller and headed off for baggage claim. When we arrived the bags were already coming out and ours came pretty quickly.

I got a number of comments about how good he was on the flight-which I'd agree with. He was wonderfully happy and cooperative.

Then we made our way to the shuttle bus to the rental car location and picked up the rental car. Luckily there were a number of helpful people along the way there, like the shuttle drive who helped load most of our stuff. I got the car seat installed in the car and then we were on our way for the 40 minute drive to Santa Cruz.

Next report: Naps, night sleeping, and visiting.