Grey's World: 9 Months

The last single digit monthly post...and nostalgia consumes me already!  Grey turned 9 months old a little over a week ago.

{19lbs 3oz & 27.5 inches}

{Favorite Songs: ABCD, You Are My Sunshine & Somewhere Over the Rainbow}

{Favorite Books: Touch & Feel & Llama Llama Red Pajama}

{Milestones: Transitions from sitting to lying & back, rocks on all fours}

{Words: Ba-ba}

This little guy is crazy busy!!!  He transitions with ease from his belly to sitting.  He gets on all fours from a sitting position & rocks, but he either lands on his belly or transitions back to sitting.  He just can't figure out how to works his knees/legs yet to propel himself forward.  That doesn't stop him though!  He moves onto his belly from a sitting position, rolls to where he wants to go, and then gets back into a sitting position once he's there.  Presto!  Who needs crawling?!  LOL.

He constantly has his hands in his mouth...or some other object that he can gnaw on.  Literally...any object.  Just yesterday he rolled on over to where Chad was sitting and started gnawing on Chad's big toe!!!  Ewwwww!  Yuck!!!!  Poor boy still doesn't have any teeth.  We joke that he's going to be the only 16 year old on a date eating pureed food.  LOL!!  Seriously though, we can now see the outline of 4 teeth on the bottom and two on the top.  They even seem to be progressing closer towards the surface, but they haven't shown face yet.  They're definitely bothering him, as you can see in the picture above.

Grey had been on a fairly decent run of health up until the end of month 8 when he was diagnosed with his 2nd ear infection.  This ended up aggravating his reflux, which had gotten much better.  Unfortunately Grey dealt with a week's worth of vomiting before we figured out it was his reflux.  This caused his weight to drop a bit also.  The good news is that once we figured all this out and increased his reflux med, his appetite was back up to normal in no time and he gained enough weight to get back on the growth curve.  Yahoo!! Overall it's been a great month.  We love seeing his little personality shine through!

Here's some shots from his 9th month.

Cheers!

Infant Airline Travel: Navigating the Airport

As promised, here is the 2nd part of my Infant Airline Travel posts.  After you master packing, you'll need to start thinking about the airport.  This is another big mountain to climb.  

First you need to decide on a specific philosophy.  Ours was to check the stroller with our luggage, wear Grey & gate check the car seat. We've done this on both trips so far, and it's worked out fairly well.  Some parents opt for gate checking the stroller also and using it throughout the airport.  For us, it just seemed like another thing to lug (especially through TSA), so we wanted to get rid of it as soon as possible.  Regardless of whether you gate check the car seat/stroller or check-check them, you'll want to get covers for them. I've seem plenty of parents who choose not to do so, but we figured that we paid way too much for our travel system to let it get torn up.  Here's the covers we bought for the car seat and stroller - both are working out phenomenally.

Once we arrived at the airport, we immediately packed up both the stroller & car seat and wore Grey in our Ergo 360 on the airport shuttle and throughout the airport.  We knew that we needed to bring Grey's birth certificate, so both trips we've opted to go to the ticket counter to check our bags instead of using the curbside service.  Curbside may work just fine, but we haven't taken that risk yet.

Security...this was much easier than I thought it would be.  All I can say is get there early and exercise your patience.  All airports that we have visited allowed me to wear Grey through without taking him out of the carrier.  They just had me go through the metal detector, swabbed my hands, and then checked our bags.  We kept all his baby food and meds in one backpack.  I was able to take this out quite easily and put it in a bin.  We also had to bring a soft-sided cooler with a hard, plastic ice pack for Grey's prescription meds. This was all easy - just takes time.  One other word of advice...do not - I repeat do not - use a soft ice pack.  I've watched several of these be confiscated at security.  Only use the hard plastic ice packs.

Once you get through security, you're home free.  Give yourself a pat on the back for sure!! Here's a few other suggestions for the flight:

• Buy water after security to use on the plane for bottles & sippy cups.
• If gate checking an item, don't forget to check in at the gate before boarding.
• Feed your baby on take off and landing...unless they're sleeping.  Our little guy didn't have any problems on take off or landing if he was sleeping.
• Most planes have a changing station in one of the bathrooms.  on the Southwest flights we were on, the changing station was located in the front bathroom.  It pulled down over the toilet.  Tight fit but manageable.  Take only the supplies you need.  Most flight attendants will assist you if needed.
• Buy new toys and bring them out on the plane...but not before!!!
• The barf bag proves to be a great toy/puppet.

As I mentioned before, we are definitely not pros.  So there's a thing or two we'd do differently knowing what we know now after these first couple of trips.  The most apparent of these is...Uber or hire a car to/from the airport.  Why you ask?  Because lugging all that stuff is a pain in the a$$!  The long-term parking at the KC airport requires you to take a shuttle to/from the actual terminal.  The ride is short, and the busses are a decent size.  However, it's not a quick process to lug a car seat, stroller, two suitcases, two backpacks and 2.5 humans on/off the bus.  When you arrive at the terminal, other passengers just want to get the heck off as they scramble to their gate...or they want to get the heck on anxious to get to their cars.  This does not lend itself to the two trips that it takes to gather all this stuff and lug it off or on the bus.  Next time...we're taking an Uber who can drop us off or pick us up right at the terminal.  No more shuttle busses when I can help it!  We'll try this out in October - our next schedule flight.  Until then...

Travel safe.

Travel smart.

Cheers!