Tuesday morning – Los Angeles California

Sarah and I have embarked upon our first journey with Madeline. We are taking the trip to Southern California and then drive up the coast to San Francisco. The tickets are from the trip that we didn’t manage to take last year because Sarah had such bad morning sickness. Now with Madeline we have different challenges.

We didn’t know what to expect at the airport for traveling with an infant. We knew that Madeline could fly free but she needs a number of items just to roll, carry, or hold her that need to get onto the plane and transported along with us. We met Ami and Ilana at the gates since they are also traveling to Southern California and driving up to San Francisco. Since they recently moved to Boston and are apparently following us through California my best guess is that they are Russian spies. I must be getting too close to building that uber-weapon that will wipe out all energy supplies by breaking them down chemically without releasing heat. But that is supposed to be top secret work so they shouldn’t have known about it. I knew Ami’s cover as a physics professor was thin.

So we had to get through the dreaded security check with an infant, a laptop, a car seat, a snap-and-go, a car seat base, a diaper bag, a bag of baby clothes, and a breast pump. Carrying all of this through the security check was recommended to us when we went to check-in our bags since they mentioned that you just gate check the baby stuff.

As our turn in the line became apparent leagues of other travelers migrated to the other security booth to avoid the apparent mayhem and delays that would ensue from our attempts to clear the security check. The first problem we had was that Madeline wasn’t officially on the tickets. So the security personnel had a discussion between a trainee and a superior to determine if it was alright. Apparently if your baby isn’t on the ticket you might be planting a baby bomb into her or she could be used as a part to assemble a larger weapon. But the cool head of the superior saw that we were not to be thwarted and allowed us through to the X-ray and metal detector area. I knew what to do with the laptop, you take it out of the bag and put it into it’s own basket. The baby does not come with such clear instructions.

After hearing that you are supposed to walk through with the baby in the car seat I dismantled the snap and go, took off my shoes, and started to walk through the metal detector with the car seat. Apparently this was wrong so I had to then remove Madeline from the car seat, put it through the security check, and then she went through in my arms without a problem. We then worked to collect our disorganized belongings at the other side with the help of Ami and Ilana, put our shoes on, repacked Madeline into her car seat, reassembled the snap and go, and rolled off to buy some magazines and food for the flight. They no longer serve real food on flights across the country. You can buy a snack that includes Oreos, cheese product, crackers, Goldfish, and an inedible sausage, but no real food.

So when we got to the gate we had added a full load of two hamburgers (that Sarah initially ordered as cheeseburgers without the cheese), one chicken whopper , three magazines (Maxim, Us, and In Touch), and two large BK beverages. Madeline was having a good time getting changed in the bathroom while the woman at the check-in counter was looking for the man who was scheduled to sit next to our mess. He was offered a different seat and gladly accepted it leaving us with three seats rather than two. When we were called in group 4 we were a total disaster trying to get to the gate with Madeline beginning to get upset. So we had to add one full bottle of milk with baby attached that cries when milk is removed to our set of items traveling onto the plane.

Putting a car seat into the plane is a bit of a challenge. You first need to bind the seat to the base to get onto the plane. This allows you to walk down the aisle bumping into things as you go and if people are traveling in the other direction you can lift the seat and hit passengers in aisle seats in the head with the car seat. They are normally gracious because they pity you for being the person with an infant on the plane. When you get to your seat you need to dismantle the base of the car seat from the seat in order to belt in the base. The base must go in the window seat, which makes sense, since you couldn’t get past it once it was in if it was in the aisle seat without out detaching the base. Since the baby is in the car seat it makes life a little more challenging as you take-up two seats to manage the base and seat. Sarah was able to sit in the third seat while I finagled the seat. While all of this seat wrangling was going on Madeline was not happy unless attached to the bottle. But we did manage to get her installed.

The flight itself was easier than expected. Madeline only cried at the beginning and we watched a bad movie called Dreamer with Dakota Fanning. Given that we had three seats I would hate to imagine what would have happened if we had tried to pull off this flight in two seats. Maybe we’ll find out on our return trip.

I figure that Madeline is a better actress than Dakota Fanning and I read two tabloids on the flight so since we are in Hollywood for about 14 hours she should give her acting career a shot. Unfortunately I couldn’t find any roles for an 11 week old yet. The Michelin ads are apparently filmed at a different time of year and she isn’t an identical twin.