Shamu airplane

The whole family took a trip to Orlando this past weekend to visit Eric (Hi Eric!!). This meant that we had to take a plane ride - technically 4 separate plane rides - which had Ada over the moon with excitement.

Ada loves flying so much that all she could talk about on Wednesday at school was how she was going to go on an airplane in "two couple of days" although really she was going in one day - we didn't really correct her.

The flight out was pretty uneventful - Ada was happy and well rested, and Elliot and I took turns being the one to entertain her as she made no signal that was ready for a nap (the WHOLE day).

Our trip was also good, although Ada refused to go to sleep before 1 am even though Elliot and I often fell asleep around midnight.

On the flight back we stopped in Denver to switch planes. On the tarmac in Denver we spotted a Southwest plane that was painted like Shamu. Thinking it would be a good distraction for Ada, Elliot pointed it out. Ada's latest obsession is Shamu (or dolphin as she likes to call him) and when she saw the plane she HAD to be on it. Now if you know how plane travel works you understand that you get whatever plane the airline lines up for you and there is no discussion about it. Well Ada still has some education in this area and decided that screaming throughout the terminal was going to get her what she wanted. And honestly I wouldn't have thought any less of the folks at Southwest if they did cave under her intense wailing, but alas they did not. So the only way I could get Ada to stop crying was to tell her we were going to go look around the airport for the Shamu plane. We took a walk to the bathroom and looked for him in the stall, the sink and the trash can - no luck. Elliot took her to the cafe around the corner from our gate and they checked in the refrigerated case and behind the counter but still had no luck. She did melt down one more time after they got back from the food adventure but we managed to distract her with hope that Shamu might be on the plane. We figured that once she got on the plane the excitement over flying might take over and resolve the fit throwing.

Luckily it did. You could see the looks of relief on the faces of all of our fellow passengers as they boarded the plane, didn't hear any wailing, and walked by our row to see Ada happily looking out the window (her big plane window) and talking loudly about the bags that were being loaded below us.