The best-laid plans... traveling with a toddler

While our overall travel experience was reasonably smooth, as I mentioned in my earlier post, it wasn’t without its hiccups. First came the “short-staffed” security crew in Detroit. Then in my haste to get everything through the conveyor belt in a (reasonably) timely manner, I forgot to take out my carefully packed zipper bags of liquids, so our bag got pulled for a search. Yippie. Fortunately, this man was nice and even (mostly) repacked my bag for me before dashing off to tend to other nefarious passengers with baby ibuprofen and bottles of juice in their luggage.

Boarding the plane with large convertible carseat in tow, we had many helpers, including a great couple of flight attendants. I managed to get the seat installed and Elliot into it without much incident. Then the engines kicked on and we started to taxi down the runway. Elliot was not impressed. Or maybe he was a little too impressed. At any rate, he screamed the entire time, from the point when the engines fired up to the point when I took him out of his seat when we reached cruising altitude. Ugh. Then, shortly before they came around with beverages, one of the flight attendants stopped by to see how he was doing. “How old is he?” she asked. “Eighteen months,” I responded. “Oh,” she said. “Well then he doesn’t need to stay in his seat. Do you want me to take that and stow it so you have more room?” she asked. (Hmm, let me think…) “Yes, yes please!”

The rest of the flight was much better. He slept in my lap, ate cheese crackers and tried to get the little boy across the aisle from us to make faces back at him. Even the landing went smoothly. Sure, he was nervous, but it was a lot easier to take on mom’s lap than strapped in his seat.

We arrived in Amsterdam with four hours until our next flight. Great, because they have a play area where Elliot could burn off some steam, plus a nap room and lots of places to grab a quick bite to eat. Except Elliot didn’t want to play in the play area… Fortunately, they also have LOTS of moving walkways. So we spent much of our layover riding up and down the moving walkways watching the activity at the airport.

We did manage to grab a quick bite to eat in between laps and, naturally, he went to sleep about 45 minutes before we were to board our next flight. Oh well. Luckily, we were able to pass through security (yes, you have to take your carryon bags through security a second time in Amsterdam) with him peacefully sleeping in the sling. He woke up as we were waiting in line to board, though, and did not sleep again until we got to our destination for the night. Good thing mom packed lots of goodies.