Travel baby

Yelena survived her first flight relatively unscathed. Take off wasn't a blast and landing was misery, but she did remarkably well, with no bouts of crying during the intervening 3 plus hours. She only took 2 short cat naps, despite getting up almost 3 hours before her usual wake-up time, and was a bit grumpy stuck in my lap at times, but I stood up and bounced and put her in my seat and played with her and she got compliments from many of our neighbors on how well she did. I wouldn't want to do it every day and it would have been a lot easier with Eli, but we're ok now and enjoying the warmth and sun.

The mamzers at American do not allow pre-boarding for passengers with children!

I am without many of my entertaining tricks here, so we will have to improvise. Fortunately, there are a lot of new sights, sounds and faces to keep her amused. I wish I could have brought my violin -- there was no way I was going to check it and I was already carrying on the diaper bag, stroller and Yelena and barely had enough appendages for that -- as Yelena can sit and watch the bow go back and forth mesmerized for 45 minutes at a time.