San Diego Adventure - Day 1

Our Monday began very early - 4:45 am. We got up, got showered and dressed, brought the bags down and loaded them in the car. My plan was to get Charlotte up about 5:45, change her into another pair of pajamas so she would be comfy on the plane, and then head to the airport. My Dad was coming to drive us so we wouldn't have to drag all of our stuff to the terminal from the parking garage. What a huge help!

Luckily the line to check our bags wasn't long, and we were on our way to the security line in no time. This was the part I was dreading most. The TSA lady must have seen the look of stress in my eyes and she let us in a separate line where there was no one else waiting at the time...thank goodness! Charlotte was riding in her car seat with the GoGoBaby wheels attached. I had to get her out, take the wheels off and then put the seat through the x-ray machine. We hadn't practiced enough evidently because it took a long while to detach the wheels. I then tried to put the seat on the belt...it didn't fit and someone had to hand check it (this was after another lady was like "are you sure it doesn't fit?"). We finally got through security, put all of our stuff back together and made our way to the gate. We sat down and I got Charlotte set up with her breakfast. Despite all the effort exerted checking in and going through security, we still had about an hour before boarding, so we had to let Charlotte move around a bit since she wouldn't be able to for a while. I wasn't too keen on her crawling around on the airport floor, but hey, you do what you gotta do!

We boarded the plane, I wrestled with the car seat to get it installed and we were on our way. I was worried because Charlotte's feet could touch the seat in front of her and she had discovered it was fun to push and kick on the seat. I premptively apologized to the person sitting in front of us and hoped for the best. Luckily Charlotte fell asleep a little while after take-off and slept about an hour. I was hoping she'd sleep a bit longer, but oh well. She was a good girl the whole flight. Once the seatbelt sign had been off for a while, we decided to get her out and hold her a while. She enjoyed people watching and smiling at sleeping passengers :) She eventually crawled back into her seat and we gave her milk and a snack.

We heard the flight attendant mention we still had about an hour and a half left of flying time. We were all getting a bit antsy, so we started pulling out new toys from our "bag of tricks". After those were exhausted, out came the iPhone! Steve had put a few episodes of Elmo's World on his phone so we could entertain Charlotte a bit.

Here she is with the iPhone, very focused!



After a little while longer we had landed at the airport. We decided to wait until most everyone was off the plane to attempt to get out ourselves since we had to undo the car seat and get a whole bunch of stuff down the aisle. The seat was a bit tricky to detach as the buckle was behind the seat and there wasn't much room to get my arm back there. When we finally got off the plane we didn't see our stroller that we had gate checked. The flight attendant called down and it had actually been taken with all the other luggage to the baggage claim area. Hmmm...so much for the convenience of the gate check! Oh well. We had to wait a little while longer in the gate area because there was a fire alarm somewhere in the airport and they were holding everyone back until they got it cleared up. Finally we arrived at baggage claim and retrieved all of our stuff (including the stroller). We headed outside and over the skybridge to get on the rental car shuttle.

Here is a pic of Charlotte in her ride waiting for the shuttle (notice the mismatched outfit - she spit up at Dulles airport before boarding so I changed her shirt)



We got the rental car, loaded everything up, installed the car seat and were off! I had called the hotel while waiting to get the car to see if our room was ready or if we should go somewhere else first to grab lunch. Luckily a room was ready so we went to the hotel first. After freshening up a bit, we ate lunch at the hotel restaurant and then headed back up to the room so we could try and get Charlotte a nap. She fussed for a while but eventually fell asleep.

After her nap we headed up the road to the local grocery store - Ralph's - to pick up a few things to have in the room. We were able to keep Charlotte up until about 6pm (9 pm east coast time, and 15 hours after she had woken up that morning). We were in bed not too long after! Overall not a bad travel day.