My pal, Cat, said that, in her experience flying with her baby girl, if there is enough room on the flight (and if you ask nicely), the flight attendants will often let you bring the car seat on the plane. Neither of the legs of our trip were at capacity, so we took a chance. Worked out both ways and we were able to safely house Em in a car seat. Traveling with her car seat also made it easier to haul her (and one of our bags) around using our stroller frame. And we also didn't have to rent a car seat from the rental car place.
Here she is on the way up.
(Realized too late that she was supposed to be next to the window. Oops.)
She was a flying champ. She didn't make a peep on the way up. The take-off rocked her to sleep, and she woke Brent and I up from our own naps with her sweet babbling. (It was a 6 a.m. flight - we'd all been up since 4 a.m.) On the way back, she fussed a little at first, but again the take-off rocked her to sleep. She stayed passed out until we left the airport.
Once we arrived in San Francisco, we checked into our hotel, and Brent went to work at his San Francisco office. Em and I roamed the city. We had lunch at the swanky mall food court nearby, where half a dozen diners ooohed and ahhhed over Em in a matter of minutes. Em is apparently the new San Francisco treat!
That night we dined with our pals, Matt and Nicole.
After Brent went to work Friday, Em and I explored some more, but not until after an impromptu photo shoot at the hotel.
I loved the hallway. Couldn't resist.
That evening we traveled to nearby Concord for the retirement party. Brent's aunt was the head of nurses at a local hospital, and approximately 250 people gathered to celebrate her years of service. It was a wonderful, warm and creative send-off, and we were honored to be a part of it.
The SF hotel where we stayed provided us with a pack-n-play (fancy playpen) for Em to sleep in, which worked out pretty well. The Concord Hilton, however, provided us with this bad boy:
It was tiny and depressing and looked like something that Romanian orphans have to rock themselves to sleep in. So it was no surprise that Brent's cousin's babysitter wasn't able to get Em to sleep in it while we were at the retirement party downstairs. We came back to our room to find our sweet girl passed out as such:
We were also unsuccessful in our attempts to get her to sleep in the crib, so she spent the night with us. And holy crap - I don't know how co-sleepers do it. We did not get a wink. She was extra fussy and we were all exhausted by morning. Sheesh. For our last night we borrowed a pack-n-play from Brent's cousins. We all slept much better that night.
Saturday we spent the day with Brent's family, including all their adorable kids. (What do you call your cousins' kids? Twice removed? Second cousins? I've never figured that out.)
Em meets Wy. (Ha! Get it? M? Y? Heh.)
Wyatt is two months younger than Em.
Em and Aunt Sherryl
Em and Piper, who does a mean rendition of the Humpty Dance intro. Seriously. To die for.
See those little chairs in the background of the above photo? Well, Em decided she was ready to pull up on something other than Brent and me. The next thing we know, she was using the dowels of a chair to hoist herself up. As Brent and I exclaimed, "That's the first time!," I grabbed the camera. The pic, I caught, though was Em falling to the floor.
She doesn't quite get that once you get up, ya gotta hold on.
Oops.
Although Em's sleep was hit or miss (mostly miss) during the trip, we had a really nice time and look forward to taking her on more adventures!
"I have wandered all my life, and I have traveled; the difference between the two is this -- we wander for distraction, but we travel for fulfillment." - Hilaire Belloc
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