July 4th Weekend in California (Part 1)

This is way overdue, but I've been busy putting together the photo album for the pictures we took at Wes & Gillian's wedding.

The weekend was almost a disaster. We had an early morning flight out of JFK on Saturday and Jeff got lost parking the car. Plus, it was crazy crowded at the JetBlue terminal, which held things up to begin with. Anyway, he didn't make it onto the flight. He literally missed it by one minute. I got on the plane with Ian because I was afraid that none of us would make it and Ian had to be there to be the ringbearer. I figured it would be easier for Jeff to get a standby seat than for all three of us. In the end, it actually worked out well because Ian got to sit in Daddy's seat on the flight over and the people around us were all really nice. Ian was just glued to the window yelling out "Avi!" ecstatically, especially when one of them took off.

Soon after takeoff, he looked out the window again and just saw blue sky and clouds. He looked at me with the most perturbed expression on his face. His brow was all furrowed and it was like he was saying, "Hey, what happened? Where did all the planes go?"

He was pretty happy playing with the controls to the tv screen. He would try to push a button and then look at the screen to see if anything happened. I was looking at my watch, hoping that each new form of entertainment would last more than 30 seconds. I had packed a bag with enough food and toys to entertain a whole classroom of toddlers and feed them for a day. It turned out that I didn't need much of anything in there because he was busy reading the safety information card, pushing buttons, playing peek-a-boo with the people behind and in front of us, and standing up and sitting down incessantly. But he didn't scream and he didn't cry. He had a bottle of milk for take off and then I managed a quick diaper change on the seat about an hour or so into the flight (the lady next to us was sleeping). When the snacks came around it provided a whole HOUR's worth of entertainment. He loved the blue potato chips (I got him animal crackers, but of course he wanted the chips) and wanted to drink water out of the little water bottles. Actually, he was more interested in screwing and unscrewing the top of the bottle. The lady behind us offered us a bagel ("You can't get good bagels in California.") and then brought us more animal crackers. When he was just about done eating the chips and animal crackers, he stood quietly on the seat and got very upset when I tried to put my hand on his back to keep him from falling. "No, no," and pushed my hand away. I realized pretty quickly why -- he was taking care of business after all of those chips, crackers and milk.

We went to the lav to get him cleaned up and he was such a good boy. Then back to the seat. I figured it was about time for a nap and he was starting to get a little cranky. I asked the flight attendant for some milk and he went to get it for us. In the meantime, Ian discovered there were more chips in the bag (which was in the seatback pocket in front of me), so he was helping himself. A minute later, he felt a little heavier than usual and I look down to see his head pitched forward as he's falling asleep. So he was fast asleep before the milk was delivered to us and he slept for the rest of the flight (2 and a half hours). Such a good, cooperative boy!

I had been so nervous about flying for so long alone with him. You just never know how it will go. I'm glad I had my bag of tricks, even though some of the tricks didn't really hold his interest (like the Finding Nemo Viewmaster and the Play Doh). He liked the Play Doh canisters, but not the Play Doh itself.

So he was well-rested when we arrived in San Jose and Jiu Jiu and Wai Po were there to greet us. Thank goodness Jeff was able to get on a flight to Oakland that landed 2 hours after us.