Philly, here we come! (a.k.a. Ben's first flight)

A few weeks ago, Josh, Benjamin and I traveled up north to visit my Oma, since she could not travel to see Benjamin. It ended up being a few hundred dollars cheaper to fly into Philadelphia instead of Newark, and since Josh and I had never been to Philly, we opted for that choice.

We woke up at 4 am to get to the airport on time, so naturally, once we were fighting and frustrated at the airport (neither of us are morning people, and we did forget to pack a couple of things...), we found out that the flight was delayed. Knowing that all we had was time, we walked around (very grateful we brought Ben's jogging stroller, which we had debated) the airport and got some breakfast. I tried to feed Benjamin in a more empty part of the airport (covered up of course).

A couple of hours later, we boarded the plane. If Ben is tired, he normally refuses to sleep and is grumpy. If he is not sleepy or teething, he is a happy baby - as long as he has interaction. He has a limited attention span with toys and likes to move around. In that way, Ben takes after both of us. Josh and I cannot stay at home for an entire day without getting "cabin fever" - it appears that Ben has the baby version of that characteristic. I had packed some compact baby toys into his diaper bag, to help the time go by.

So we all get on the plane, and we keep two bags underneath our feet - 1 with my purse, camera, iPod and our books. The other bag was Ben's diaper bag. We took out a bottle of pumped milk from home (which, almost 4 hours later, was about to "expire") and a bottle nipple, and placed them in my bag for easy access. We sat down and got settled. About a minute later, Ben got cranky so we started looking in my bag for the bottle. The nipple was nowhere to be found (we still do not know where it went!). So we had ask the man sitting next to me if I could get out of the seating row. I opened our carry-on (which had my breast pump and extra bottles), but this already aggravated me - the one thing about my role as a parent that really frustrates me isn't:

• lack of sleep (although I would love to not wake up multiple times each night),
  
• spitting up all over me (this week Ben is sick, so that happens more often) or
  
• even the new lack of availability for social activities (we have yet to find a babysitter nearby for last minute plans)
  

... it is being disorganized! No matter how many times I create to dos lists or update my planner, things like this tend to happen. Maybe one day my brain will return to me :). However, that morning had many "forgetful" moments so I was anything but calm... especially since I was nervous about how Ben would handle the flight.

Luckily, Ben was exceptional during the flight. He started teething when we were delayed on the runway, so we gave him some Tylenol. He had no issues during takeoff. Ben did not even cry! He did make LOTS of cute noises, as in the past month he has become extremely talkative. The odd thing was that some people around us were rolling their eyes when he was making the cute noises; I guess they didn't realize that the alternative option of crying would be much less tolerable!

Ben moved all around my lap and Josh's, and even enjoyed looking out of the window of Josh's seat. He was particularly captivated by the pattern of the interior walls of the plane.



You could tell that at some points, he was completely content. In Josh's lap, he moved into what we call his "lounging Buddha" pose.



A couple of hours in the air, and we finally landed. While the plane was heading to the gate, Ben did get a little restless, but that was to be expected. As first time parents, we thought of how this first flight with Ben would turn out. The one thing we didn't expect was that Ben would get less frustrated than us!

Soon after, we picked out our luggage and headed to the rental car pick-up. After some frustrating issues there (which VERY luckily, Ben slept through), we were finally on the way to our hotel. Since we arrived a few hours later, the huge rainstorm (which caused the delay) had passed.

Arriving to our hotel - the Hyatt at Penn's Landing, we felt better already. It didn't matter that we were extremely hungry - we'd get something soon. We were able to relax on the King Size bed for a little while, watch some TV and decompress before a more cramped afternoon of sightseeing.