The Boy likes to travel. He's pretty much gotten it down to a science at this point. He moves through the airport with his tiny Buzz Lightyear wheelie suitcase like the seasoned veteran that he has become.
At the tender age of 32 months, he has been on 41 round trip flights. For those of you keeping score, that is 82 times through curbside check-in, through crowded security lines, delays, cancellations, and the myriad challenges that air travel offers. He has flown to New York, to Hawaii, Las Vegas (several times...yikes), Washington, D.C., Florida, and Arizona, in addition to his regular commute of Orange County, California-to-Dallas. If he has skipped your city/state, he apologizes. He'll get there.
And yet he embraces it. He can now get a security line "box" of his own if the stack is not too high. He will drop to the ground and remove his shoes, toss them in the "box" with his blanket and pillow and wait for the okay from security to walk through, boarding pass in hand. He has prompted more than one weary traveler to laugh right out loud. Sometimes that traveler is me. If I'm not too weary.
Once aboard, we have a routine. We always try to fly as close to 1 o'clock in the afternoon as possible, or as we like to call it in the industry, "naptime". A hearty lunch, a beverage, a video on the trusty iphone, and hopefully, this...
Bliss, I tell you.
The flight from Orange County to Dallas is (normally) less than three hours, so this plan is pretty much foolproof. Works almost every time. Well, that is if the flight attendant can manage to notice that a small child is sleeping, and not repeatedly ask me at a volume necessary to counteract the fact that I am wearing headphones, whether or not I need another beverage. Do all of them not read the universal sign language for "No, thank you"?? I'm sorry, but I thought the horizontal wave of a hand, accompanied by a side-to-side shaking of the head, should suffice as an answer. She must be new.
Maybe I'm just cranky because 1o'clock in the afternoon is not my usual naptime, and this is my view for 2-plus hours.
But the mixed nuts were good.
Okay, right about here the view starts improving. I am getting back to my natural habitat, and things are looking decidedly better.
Once we are on the ground in California, The Boy bids farewell and thank you to the entire flight crew, correctly identifies all of our luggage on the carousel, and tells the man outside that we need a cab. Is it okay that I still call him "Baby"?
On this trip, we are staying with a friend just south of Los Angeles. Perhaps this will give you an idea of why we love it at her house. It looks like she threw a padlock on the entrance to keep us out, but this is one of the gates they don't use. I know.
Just before you arrive at the gates, this is the view that greets you.
There's more. Much, much more. But let me get my bearings first, and bask in the salt air and sea breezes.
Cause I'm selfish like that...sorry.
