Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Lap Sitter

Next week we take off to Utah for my sister Amanda's wedding (hooray!), and I have been thinking about how to keep Giovanna occupied and happy during our flights. Finally I had this brilliant idea: Before we board the plane I can recruit women in the waiting area to sign up for a rotation. One after another each woman will take Gigi for fifteen minutes or so and let her rummage through their bags. Gigi would be totally content investigating the contents of these many purses, the other passengers will be relieved because she won't be crying, and the airplane will be full of mutual happiness and satisfaction.


But for some reason I just can't see it happening. So I thought of Plan B: Mary Poppin's magical bag. What do you think? I could bring along a lot of toys and snacks, and if I run out of energy to keep pulling things out, I can just drop Gigi in and call it good. Bonus feature? The bag is dark inside, and might even lull her into taking a nap.

No?

Okay... Plan C: I bring 1 (one) bag and try to bring the very best of novel toys, and the very tastiest of snacks, and pray really, really hard that she will behave. Or, at least that she will not cry (too much). And this is where you come along: do any of you have some winning entertainment ideas? I have starting putting some toys aside, and we will have Marcos' smart phone with some sesame street songs for when we have really had it, but I could use some help with brainstorming. If you have ever traveled with a 1-ish year old who needed to sit for longer periods of time than usual, and something worked, please share (maybe ideas from Sacrament meetings?)! Gigi is a good, usually happy girl, but she likes roaming, and she is little and can't sustain attention for an extremely long amount of time. Thanks for considering!

Plan D: In an emergency situation adopt the mantra "These people hate me but I will never see them again in my life. These people hate me but I will never see them again in my life..."

4 comments:

Jamie said...

Hit the dollar store, by enough new things for each 20 mins of the flight. Wrap them like presents. Present a new one when the old one gets boring. My 18 month old loved a play cell phone that actually made noise, I was worried about the noise, but it is so drowned out by the airplane it didn't matter.
Good luck! I know it is tough!

Kim said...

Lots and lots of snacks.

Other than that, I have nothing. Except maybe, don't get caught in a lightning storm.

Heather said...

I was going to recommend something similar to Jamie - good idea. I would also get new books from the library she's never seen. Does she do puzzles yet? Kids can do those over and over. Bring some paper to scribble on. And take her on walks down the corridor of the plane -- people think that's cute, especially if she hasn't started crying yet. Finally, bring plenty of Tylenol/Motrin for yourself!!

Lauren said...

I know I'm too late for this but does she like Baby Einstein? It has saved us in a pickle even though I felt terrible for putting my child in front of a movie screen at such a young age.