A New Way to Travel

Eladia, Mom, and Dad took off for Buffalo early in the Morning. At first, it looked like Mom and Dad's little trick worked. They had kept Eladia up late the night before, so she would sleep on the plane. And judging by Eladia's blank stare on the parking lot shuttle, she was going to be down quickly..... or not.

Even though Eladia did not sleep, she was fairly pleasant for the first leg of the trip into Minneapolis. (This was good for Mommy and Daddy because they had bad flashbacks to their last Minneapolis layover: 10 minutes to make it down a concourse, through two wings of a mall, and halfway down another concourse). With a two hour layover, Eladia got a chance to stretch out her legs, and discover something fascinating.... escalators (which she had tried before) and MOVING WALKWAYS.

Daddy took Eladia for a walk to burn off some energy. He figured they would just explore the concourse. However, Eladia had to ride down the escalator to the tunnel back to the main airport. Since they were in the most remote corner of the airport with little foot traffic, Daddy consented. So, Eladia stepped onto the escalator, and got off at the bottom (completely unaided). The first thing she did at the bottom was hang a U-turn and head back up, then back down, the up, and then down again. It was at this point she saw the moving walkway, and decided to run (feet off the ground) down it. At the end (of course), she made a u-turn and ran back. Then she ran down, and back, and down again. It was at this point she did something a little unorthodox. She walked down the remainder of the tunnel instead of using the walkway, and climbed UP fifty stairs (into the main concourse) so that she could take the longer escalator DOWN. And since it was a longer escalator, she now had to experience going up it. At this point, it was getting close to boarding so Daddy and Eladia had to take the last escalator ride down, run across the two moving walkways, ride the final escalator up, and race to the gate.

And all that walking worked. Eladia fell asleep in Mommy's arms. Unfortunately, the flight was delayed 20 minutes which meant Eladia got half a nap before being woken up during boarding (Mom and Dad tried hard to keep her a sleep), and was not going to fall back asleep.

Luckily, Eladia found a new toy on the plane... her shoes. She would stick her hands in them, and, when anyone asked where her hands went (or say she had feet for hands), she would pull her hands out and laugh. That took up a good fifteen minutes.

Eladia also showed a little bit of a high maintenance side. She happened to notice the flight attendant was a couple of rows away, so she reached over, grabbed her sippy cup, held it out, and said "juice, juice." The attendant was nice enough to fill her cup ahead of the previous row.

All in all, Eladia was a good traveler. The only time she screamed was when the second plane was landing. A mom a row ahead asked if Eladia needed something to suck on to help with her ears. Dad said "Nope. She's never had a problem with her ears. She's just upset because she has to be restrained."