The Plane Ride Home

Amelia loves hanging out in her car seat in the airport terminal. This time I captured it on film!

Each time we got on or off the plane Amelia walked down the aisle all by herself with no encouragement from me.

Since I was traveling with a small child, we had priority boarding and after us and one other family there were two wheelchair assistance passengers, so there was a bit of a gap until the rest of the passengers boarded. Once they did, Amelia stood in her seat and started pointing and announcing, "People! People!" It was amusing to me and a few of the 'people', too.

I took advantage of the lack of passengers to walk up to the cockpit and ask the flight attendant if I could take a picture of Amelia with the pilot(s). She agreed but unfortunately took Amelia from me - something Amelia is not a big fan of at all - and while we managed a shot, it's not the happiest one. The flight attendant was planning on putting Amelia in the pilot's lap which is why she took her. It was a little strange, in retrospect, how the flight attendant just took Amelia from my arms without warning, and I didn't quite realize it had happened until after it did. Oh well.

On the flight down Amelia thought we were on a bus. I tried to explain plane to her and even took out the pamphlet with the diagram of the plane, but it didn't compute for her. There was no repeat of "bus" on the way home, though.

I love this shot of her. She was staring out the window and I was trying to get a shot of that, but she turned at the last second and I have this beautiful picture of her pretty brown eyes.

When we were packing to leave I used the 'emergency outfit' in her diaper bag to clothe her and didn't replace it hoping that we could make it the few hours home with no accidents since I needed the extra room for books to amuse her during the flight. I brought apple juice, but no milk since we use one of those take-n-toss cups for milk and those sometimes lose the top when Amelia clenches her teeth on the spout and then pulls the cup off. (This doesn't happen often, but I wasn't going to take a chance that the plane ride would be one of those times.) Once we boarded the plane I quickly changed her diaper so when we took off, she had a dry diaper. The flight would have us home in less than 90 minutes and I figured we had all our bases covered. Well, sure enough, since I didn't have an extra outfit, we wound up needing it. During our descent she pooped. I debated whether or not I should change her while we waited for people to deplane, and then I noticed it had gotten on her shirt ... and pants. Yuk. There was no way I was holding her and getting it on me, so after using a wet wipe on the seat, I let her walk down the aisle by herself. (Thank God for the aforementioned independence for walking aisles.) We made a pit stop immediately upon deplaning and Amelia met her daddy in everything but an outfit - a diaper, onesie, poncho, shoes & socks.

What a memory!

[pictures dated 11/11/07]