Whirlwind tours

Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana. We had a whirlwind visit to CO last week to the lovely Casa de Bump. I must say, visiting friends or family makes me remember that people's homes can be beautiful places. This is not an ideal we're chasing here in the rental. We didn't do much of anything (aside from an art show--it's amazing when poof, one of your friends is an artist and a good one to boot) but we had a grand time. Colorado is cold compared to SD right now. It was just a day trip but so nice and felt so much longer than that, really.

How did our boy do? He's a champ. We had four flights (SD to Vegas, Vegas to Denver with no change in planes, then Denver to Vegas with a plane change). A cried from the time he was buckled into the seat until the plane began moving on the first flight and didn't wake up until Denver. The second set of flights was more harried, but that was not A's fault.

We met those people: mom who looked like Barbie in her skin-tight Lucky brand jeans and blue suede and shearling knee-high boots, dad who was dragged along against his will and spent most of the time playing with his phone, and their two screaming children, maybe six and ten (?), a girl and a boy. Mom left the boy in the gift shop by himself, the girl ran around taking off her shirt, and dad claimed "he couldn't watch both the bags and her [the girl]." These children did not look 5 and under, but they pre-boarded and sat right behind us.

So the girl is screaming for most of the flight, the boy is yelling about how he wants to sit next to a window and sit next to mom, and dad is pretending he doesn't know them. Mom is delaying the flight by getting the girl her Garfield book during taxiing. There was so much movement and noise from between the seats behind us (which A is facing in his car seat) that he didn't sleep until I threw a blanket over our seats to hide the horrible family. Then he slept the whole way.

On descent, the flight attendants say to C and me, "How old is your baby?" Seven months. "I haven't heard a peep out of him the whole flight." No, he's a good traveler. "I bet you guys are thinking, 'Never, never, never." This was a flat-out reference to the horrible family behind us. I said that saying 'Never' is the best way to ensure that's what you get, and they laughed, but they complimented us again on how super A is.

A slept through descent, disembarking, and the whole next flight. Our connection in Vegas was cut short because the plane arrived early, which meant I left a sleeping A and all our bags in the watch of a woman in a wheelchair and her family while I went sprinting to Burger King to get C so we could board the plane. C and I decided we really need to have a plane with seat assignments; it wasn't bad with a baby to pre-board (bulkhead 3 out of 4 flights) but it just wigs us out to find seats on the plane. But they certainly load those planes quickly.

Anyway, this trip was a good test of our travel abilities and new gear:

• Travel crib - okay, but we need to spend more time getting A comfy in it. Quite light and inflates quickly.
• New backpack-converting carry-on bag - great! C had nothing but good things to say about the design of the bag and pronounced it "well-engineered," which is high praise. We need to figure out how to pack a soft-sided bag again.
• Vacuum-packing bags that suck all the air out of your clothes and compress them - very cool, although they seemed to do the best with Polarfleece.
• 3 ounce bag rule - Fine except for contact lens solution, which stupid manufacturers aren't making in 3 ounce sizes I've seen yet. Nobody made me throw out my (gasp) 4 ounce bottle on the way back, however.
• Freebie tote bag - still not great for much other than our swim class bag. We need a different lightweight tote.