Ace Traveler

Wow, Ella is a wonderful travel companion.  She listened at the airport, behaved well on the plane, is generally a lot of fun. J’s seat was moved and we had a bit of drama.  His claustrophobic self was not going to get on the plane if they didn’t move his seat back to an aisle (as I originally arranged after being on the phone for almost an hour with the frequent traveler desk).  J has traveled over 150k miles with Northwest this year, and yet the gate staff elected to give him a hard time about moving him back to an aisle seat.  Once that was straightened out, he was on the opposite side of the plane from us, but at least he had an aisle.

Ella watched Sid the Science Kid on my Zune for a little while and then slept once they (finally) turned out the lights.  Of course, there was not enough room for us to lie down, so I sat on the floor in front of her and let her sleep across the two seats until my legs went numb.  Then I ended up holding her on my lap while I sat on my (broken tailbone) seat.  The armrest in the new KLM plane does not completely lift between the seats, and that was rather annoying.  I couldn’t complain much, though, because I had a perfectly behaved child.  (What a pleasant surprise!) Here she is having a snack of her favorite crackers (Trader Joe’s Multigrain mini crackers with soy sauce) and she also drank a liter of water and two glasses of apple juice.  The most hydrated of all of us once we left the plane!

When we arrived at Schipol Airport, we headed straight for the KLM Crown Lounge.  One benefit of having a frequently-traveling husband is to have access to the nice lounges.  Too bad I’m on so much medication, so I couldn’t avail myself of the mimosas, but a coffee and some cookies were a nice treat before I took a 40 minute nap.  Ella licked the salt off of some pretzels and ate some packages of Jam before coloring and reading with Daddy:

That red shirt she is wearing is something I made for Peter when he was FOUR YEARS OLD.  I guess I never fully realized how little he was!  He certainly has grown!

He emailed me yesterday.  What a sweetheart he is.

When we arrived at the Hotel FRONT, we were exhausted.  In fact, Ella ell asleep almost immediately, so J had to go out to dinner with our friend who’s in town by himself.  Oh well.

 

I awoke the next morning for the sunrise:

And the Ella and I slept through breakfast until almost 2 in the afternoon.  Now THAT’s vacation!

Today we were supposed to spend the day shopping with J, but it’s cold and rainy outside.  Ella discovered that she loves the kind of shower you can hold, and is really loving the stones on the floor in the shower of our room.  Here she is enjoying a little more Sid post-shower, in her towel:

Sometimes it’s hard to believe she’s only TWO!