Saturday, September 18, 2010

Don't Be That Baby

We took a trip to see Grandpa yesterday. My dad lives down in Houston. Sure most people would hop in the car and drive the 4 hours. That's what we used to do. But since I work for a company that owns a bunch of jets.....we fly.

Our car seat is a fancy Peg Perego model. It's very high quality...but one annoying feature. The seat MUST have a base attached to a seat belt. The base must be removed to be attached to a stroller. When we fly we have to carry the base through the airport and then check the stroller and carry the base on board. Not so great for those who travel light and frequently.

To solve this we decided to buy a car seat just for traveling. We stopped by a baby store and checked them out. Me being me I compared prices to Amazon. We found a decent Graco model for $130 in the store.....only $75 on Amazon...shipped free in just two days. We didn't inspect it too much, after all it was just for travel.

When it arrived, I checked it out more. Wow is it cheap! It's the small things like the lack of neck strap pads, one pull adjustable straps, super soft padding and overall substantialness. But again....it's just for travel.

This was Natali's second round trip. The first two went very well.

Because this was a day trip we bit the bullet and parked at the terminal instead of my free (but time consuming and non baby friendly employee parking) Just a diaper bag and an Ipad each, we breezed through security.

The flight down was fine. She slept most of the way. She slept a lot that day. Which was a problem.

We made it to my dad's house and visited before heading to lunch. Natali was sleep most of the time.



She slept through lunch. She slept one the ride back to my dad's house. She slept at my dad's house. She slept on the car ride back to the airport.

Back at the airport it started. The fussiness started....she slept too much. We only had enough formula for one more bottle....just a 2 ouncer. She took it down and was still a little fussy. Not good.

I dashed off to a shop in the airport that sold sundries. They had one single use infant bottle left. It was a different brand...and huge...8 ounces....but it was our only choice.

Natali was fussy in the terminal area unless we held her...and even then she was loudly crying. Thankfully we were traveling light. I held Natali while Kelli carried the baby seat and diaper bag on board.

Once onboard the crying started. Bad. I held her and calmly talked to her. She quieted down...looked me in the eyes as I spoke, "Natali honey, Don't Be That Baby"....and once I was done...the crying continued. No amount of holding or a pacifier helped. I called for the one use bottle.

She didn't eat much, but as long as she had that nipple in her mouth, she was content.

I held her in my arms for the entire flight. She slept after takeoff.

Once back home she was quiet. But the night was rough. Instead of waking up just twice during the night, she woke up almost every hour. Lesson learned.

We will no longer allow her to just sleep. She's hard to wake up. I found a new...ummm tool....the new environmentally friendly Sun Chips bags. Picking one up sounds like nails in a metal bucket.

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