Flying with a toddler, aka. FWT

A few weeks ago, we celebrated The Hubby's Golden Birthday - the birthday where you turn the same age as your birthdate.  For this special occasion, he had one request, to go to Dallas, Texas and see our favorite football team, the Dallas Cowboys, play in their stadium.  From the moment he mentioned it, I worked to make it happen.  

Fortunately, we have family that live in Dallas, so once I sent an email asking if we could visit (and stay with them), I worked on finding out what game The Hubby most wanted to see.  Once settled, I worked on getting the tickets.  

Fortunately, our family that lives in Dallas, also has connections to getting tickets to Cowboys' games (you are right if you are thinking they are great relatives to have :) 

Once everything was decided, we booked our flights and prepared for an adventure...flying with a toddler, or FWT, as I will fondly refer.  

Now Little Lady has flown before, several times actually.  Her first being the heroic trip that I conquered BY MYSELF to go visit The Hubby in California.  We have also since then flown as a family to Florida for vacation and Little Lady has done great on all flights.  

FWT is a whole different ballgame.  With a baby under 2, you can sit them on your lap/wear them, and they probably still take frequent naps that you can plan your flight conveniently around sleepytimes.  Or at least that's how we functioned previously on a plane.  FWT requires a little more finesse.  Not only do they require their own seat - WHAT?! We paid the same for me to fly to Texas as my 20 pound 2 year old child.  We also had to bring our convertible car seat and figure out how to situate it into the seat.

And yes, we do still rear-face - on a plane, and on the ground in the car.  

It's just safer that way people!  

For our flight TO Texas, we decided to book a mid-evening time, which allowed Little Lady to take her one and only afternoon nap at home, in her bed, and then board the plane for 3 hours of wide awake time!  We realized our error the moment we got seated and she wanted "out."  Thankfully I was armed with half the Trader's Joe's snack aisle many treats.  But seriously, the girl ate snacks and "special" treats for an hour.  It was great.  Then the stewardess came around and we were set with entertainment food for another 30 minutes.  

If you ask Little Lady to this day what her favorite part of our trip to Texas to was, she will answer "the lollipop she got to eat on the plane."  

To specify, our order of entertainment for Little Lady was as follows: 
1. Food
2. Toys
3. iPad

Thankfully both food and toys monopolized the entire flight and we never had to resort to turning on the iPad.  

She happily ate and played and read and colored and anything else I could cram into her little backpack to play with.  

She, surprisingly to me, wasn't very interested in the actual taking off and landing of the plane like I thought she'd be.  

On our flight home, we felt we could handle anything since we had just entertained a toddler on a plane, awake, for 3 hours and though the circumstances were slightly different - we were flying DURING her naptime, the routine was pretty similar.  She ate, played, and then napped for the duration of the flight.  

If I had to plan it again, I would actually probably try and steer clear of naptimes since it was so hard for her to get comfortable in her car seat on the plane.  I know some people might say I'm crazy, but she entertained herself pretty well, and we didn't even have to break out the big guns, aka. the iPad - says the village idiot