Traveling Toddler

In the words of Charles Dickens, traveling with toddlers is the "best of times and the worst of times". We have been fortunate enough to be able to travel with Adaline a handful of times and have had mostly good experiences. We've also had some negative experiences, but by and large we enjoy traveling just as much now as we did pre-child.

On Adaline's first flight, she started off like a trooper. She made it nearly 3 hours into the flight and then she just lost control. For the last 45 minutes of the flight, right until we touched down, she dialed her cry up to a ten. Fortunately we were surrounded my nice people that mostly ignored her and didn't shoot us any nasty looks. The guy on the end of the row even pretended to be asleep the entire session. Mrs. Bluth is still scarred from that flight.

Our most recent flight couldn't have gone any differently. We were planning on leaving for the airport at 5:30am and so the last thing we did was wake up Adaline. She sat right up and said "We're going on the airplane today?" She didn't even need to rub the sleep out of her eyes because she was so excited. She loves flying, but mainly because she gets lots of screen time.

The plane this time had individual screens and so she got buckled in and asked for her backpack. She reached in and pulled out her special headphones and asked for help plugging them in. Once she was settled in and watching whatever kid show was on, she didn't acknowledge us for the next four hours (except to start the next episode every time the prior had finished). She didn't need food, water, or the washroom. She just vegged the entire flight.

In some ways, toddlers are incredibly adaptable and resilient. In other ways, not so much. With this trip she immediately warmed up to our hosts and had a blast being herself. She was a pretty darn good houseguest. There was the occasional meltdown because we were certainly asking a lot of her (abbreviated naps, new food, strange sleeping arrangements).