Wyatt's first plane rides

We left for Long Beach last Saturday at 12:30pm. We took a Jetblue flight out of Oakland in to Long Beach. This was Wyatt's first plane ride. He loved the airport and looking at all the people walking around.

We got to pre-board the flight. Rus was very exicted about pre-boarding, but when it came time he stood there and didn't move. I had to prod him towards the plane. I sat by the window and held Wyatt for take-off. He started to get a little cranky. I knew he was hungry, but was trying to wait for take-off to give him a bottle to make sure he was sucking. I finally started the bottle once we started to move, but we sat there on the runway waiting for the planes ahead of us for a while.

Finally we took off. Wyatt screeched once. I popped the bottle back in his mouth and we were off. Most of the flight was fine. Wyatt got sick of us and sitting on our laps at several points. He was entertained for short bursts by the woman sitting behind us. When they passed out snacks I dumped my cookies in another bag and gave Wyatt the wrapper. That was good for around 20 minutes of crinkling and chewing.

For the landing, I tried his pacifier for a while, but then switched to a bottle of water. He seemed really keen on drinking. We landed and deboarded. The flight went pretty smoothly. In fact, the worst thing that happened was the teenager behind us had a meltdown because dad was making him do math homework and he was sick of it and didn't even want to come of the trip anyway and they made him come, etc.

That's not entirely true. The worst thing that happened was both Rus and my ears stayed plugged after we landed. We could hardly hear anything. Rus' cleared in a couple of hours, but mine stayed plugged until I woke up the next morning. The descent was actually very painful on my ears and having them plugged drove me nuts, which was particularly annoying because there was a graduation party for Eric at my parents' house that night.

On the way back things didn't go so smoothly. I assumed that since Wyatt usually goes to bed at 7:30pm, he would fall asleep on the plane ride that left at 8pm on Wednesday. I thought we would get there early, give him his last bottle, already have him in his PJs and he would drift off.

None of that happened except he was in his pajamas. We got to the airport at 7:15. At around 7:30 we were in the security line. Since we had brought bottled water for Wyatt's formula we went through the "family liquids" line. After his diaper bag went through they needed to swab the outside of the water bottle and run all everything through the machine again. When she told me she was going to do this I told Rus to go ahead and get on the plane (although Wyatt was attached to my ticket).

Security took forever! She stopped to check a animal carrier as she was coming back with my stuff. I had to throw away the sunscreen. She asked if I wanted to pack the bag up or not so I began throwing everything back in. Then she decided to help me because I was clearly not packing correctly. Then she wanted to talk to me about Wyatt. I gave very short yes or no answers and she finally wished me a good flight.

As soon as I found Wyatt and Rus I could smell a dirty diaper, which is something because I couldn't smell a thing for days while I was sick. There was unfortunately nothing we could do about it.

Rus held Wyatt for take-off. He managed to give him a bottle for most of the ascent. Wyatt did not go to sleep though. He stayed awake for the whole flight and he was not happy. Luckily, the guy sitting next to us moved to an open seat and left us to ourselves.

As soon as the fasten seatbelt sign was dimmed I went to the bathroom to see where the infant changing tables were. Once I figured that out I went back for Wyatt and returned to two occupied lavatories. I waited and took Wyatt inside. I had contemplated leaving Wyatt until we landed, but that seemed mean to Wyatt and to the people sitting around us. I mean if I could smell it imagine what a person with a normal sense of smell was smelling. I changed Wyatt and returned to Rus.

I held Wyatt for a while, but as we started to descend my head started to hurt, particularly on the right side. (I am never going to travel by plane with a head cold again.) I passed the boy back to Rus and he tried to give him a pacifier for the descent. Wyatt really didn't want to have anything to do with the pacifier or bottle. He cried and kicked the seat back in front of him for the last ten minutes of the flight. Luckily no one was in the seat in front of him. There was only one woman in the row ahead of us, on the isle, and I decided if she couldn't last ten minutes than it was her problem.

Once we got in to Oakland, we collected our luggage and caught the shuttle to Expresso parking. Wyatt fell asleep on the way home at around 9:45. He was up at 6:20am the next day.

For some reason he woke up at 7:20 this morning. I guess he needed to catch up.

FYI - We used the car seat bag we got instead of the Sassy bug jar that Patricia and Glynn ordered us. It worked well because we checked the bag and took the stroller to the gate.