Phase One complete

Well, we made it to Pittsburgh -- through two flights and a layover -- without too many bruises, and only one accidental pantsing.

Of course, we only got two hours of sleep before getting up at 3:45 a.m. to enable a 4:30 departure for LAX. But it is a surprising amount of work figuring out how many outfits the boys will need, might need, and should have; add burp cloths, toys, diapers, bottles, etc., and the timeless question of what to pack where and how to juggle it with our own stuff and car seats and strollers NEVER quite gets answered.

It turns out Dylan, by far the less committed napper of the two, inherited Kevin's ability to fall asleep before takeoff simply due to the plane's white noise. Kevin had him at that point, so he put him in the Baby Bjorn facing his chest, and D slept for four hours. Liam was a but more restless, but he snoozed in snippets and passed out during the landing. He also flirted with every man and woman who waited in line for the bathroom (we were in the last row, and while I usually loathe that, in this case it was a dream; with kids I recommend it).

On our second flight, Liam discovered the flight safety card, and that was IT. He was in love. I guess he likes his stories to invoke worst-case scenario scenes depicted with cheery cartoons. Kevin would brandish it, and Liam's whole face lit up and he'd go into this wide-mouthed laughing/panting hybrid. In one of the photos here, you can see the look of desperate sadness in his eyes when Kevin tried to take it away from him because we didn't want him to eat it. He obviously thinks we are crazy, because laminated cards are DELICIOUS MOM YOU HAVE NO VISION.

Everything Liam does or says is, to me, in unpunctuated all-caps.

Comments

[Gina]

I'm glad you came to the burgh on a day when we have beautiful weather. A month ago, there was almost 3 feet of snow.

[Amy Schatz]

Aww, they are so cute! We really need more photos. Seriously, you can't post too many. At least for those of us who live across the country from them.

[Alyce]

Glad it went so well on the way out. I missed the opportunity to give my one solid piece of flying with babies advice: lots of gallon size ziploc bags. In case there's an eruption, you'll want to either bag up the non soiled things or the soiled things depending on the ratio.

Love the pics. They're so big!

[Rach]

Frigging gorgeous!

[KarenNM]

When my son was younger his FAVORITE airplane "book" was the flight safety card. It drove me crazy to have to spend the flight making up happy stories about why the plane was floating in the water, and look how happy those people are on the slides!