Hayden and I got to fly with Oren for the first time yesterday. I didn’t know what to expect.

Our flight had two legs with a brief stop-over at the Cincinnati airport. We had to wake him at around 4:45 to get to our first flight. He normally sleeps until at least 7:00am, and I imagined he’d fall right back to sleep. But he didn’t. He stayed awake the whole time, and was generally just curious.

Vanessa, Hayden’s sister, had mentioned how handy an umbrella stroller can be in the airport. We had been planning to use our Baby Bjorn strap-on Oren-pouch. But we did splurge on an extremely lightweight but sturdy-enough stroller. It was $13 well spent at K-Mart.

We got to the plane near the end of, but it wasn’t very full. We had a lot of stuff with us: a roll-on suitcase with some of his stuff and ours, my work backpack, and a miniature diaper bag for him. Fortunately, we had room to put all that stuff, and even an empty seat nearby. Oren gobbled down his breakfast (at around 6:30am) and finally fell asleep.

We don’t normally rock him to sleep; when we’re holding him, he normally stays awake. He normally dozes off on his own in a chair or in his crib. It seemed to me he didn’t want to fall asleep while we were holding him on the plane, either. But, fortunately, he did….just in time for the plane to land and for us to carry him off. He dozed back off for a short nap Cincinnati airport.

Our second flight was packed. Fortunately, we got our stuff on board, and packed in next to the window and in the middle-man seat. A patient lady sat next to us.

Oren got bored on the second flight, and a little fussy about it. He did doze off some. He’s recently learned how to roll over from back to front, and he likes being on his tummy. So he spent some tummy-time spread across Hayden’s and my lap (both laps at the same time).