Flying Baby

Since we don't live near our families, we travel often to visit them in other areas of the country.  This means that Ella has been on a lot of airplanes...ten of them in her six months of life.  She's pretty much a pro, and she loves to fly.  Sitting on an airplane with 100 new friends is her idea of a great time.  She loves to watch people and talk to them, whether they're paying attention to her or not.

Recently, I took her to visit my family in Georgia, and she rode with me on AirTran.  Since the plane wasn't full, the gate agent was really nice and blocked off a seat for her next to me.  That meant that I was able to take her car seat on the plane and strap it into the seat.  She fell asleep right before we boarded, and I hoped that she might stay that way...so peaceful...

By the way, she is wearing her tutu in these pictures.  She loves that tutu, and she felt so pretty on the trip!

As I said, I had hoped she'd sleep...but let's get real.  She woke up almost immediately, and I had to change her diaper three times before takeoff.

She started playing slowly, reading her taggie book and chewing on Olivia the ostrich.

But then after a couple of minutes, she decided to get out and sit in my lap so that she could pull everything out of the seat pocket in front of me.

She particularly enjoyed the AirTran advertisement.  It tasted yummy.

Meanwhile, the toys that I'd brought remained in the car seat.

We had a good flight, although there was definitely a 10 minute interval where she blew raspberries and spit on to the poor Wash U Law student who sat next to me.  I couldn't get her to stop, so I had to turn her to face the window.  She didn't cry, though, since she was having a great time!