Our flight left Knoxville at 7:45 am and got into Minneapolis at 9:22 am (with the one hour time difference that made our flight about 2 1/2 hours). There were open seats on this flight so we were able to get our seats changed at the gate so that we could take Carter's carseat on the plane and have a seat for him. It is usually impossible to make Carter sit on our laps for any length of time - he will usually get squirmy very quickly and then start fussing a lot. This is why I was so nervous about flying with him. I figured if we were able to put him in his carseat for the flights, it wouldn't be that much different than when he's traveling in the car with us.
The plane had 2 seats on either side of the aisle so Carter had a window seat, I sat next to him, and Brian sat across the aisle from me. The gate agent was super nice when I asked her if this could be arranged and didn't hesitate on making it work for us. (This would not be the case on our return trip. I understand that not everyone might want to do this for us since we didn't buy Carter a ticket, but if there are extra seats, I hoped that for the sake of other passengers on the plane, the airline employees would want to do what they could to keep infants and young toddlers happy and quiet on flights.)
Carter did great on this first flight. He slept for the first 45 minutes of the flight. He fell asleep as the plane was literally taking off down the runway. He'd been up since around 5 am so he was ready for a nap. It wasn't too difficult to keep Carter entertained once he woke up. Feeding him snacks was the best way to pass time.
We had a 2 hour layover in Minneapolis which gave us plenty of time to get 2nd breakfast (I am pregnant and we had a really long flight ahead of us!). Our flight left Minneapolis at 11:35 am and got in to San Francisco at 1:50 pm (with the 2 hour time difference that made this leg a long 4 1/4 hours!).
Our luck ran out with the second flight. It was 100% full. The gate agent did tell us that she'd come find us on the plane if there ended up being an extra seat on the plane. I'm not really sure if she would have done this or not, but we didn't notice any open seats.
This plane had 3 seats on each side of the aisle and we had a window and middle seat. I boarded the plane early to make sure we had room for all our carry-ons. Brian and Carter joined me at the end of the boarding line to limit the amount of time Carter had to spend on the plane. Since Carter was still loving Brian and just tolerating me, he sat on Brian's lap by the window 99% of the flight.
Carter was A LOT of work to keep entertained, but he did great. He took another 45 minute nap (he actually fell asleep on Brian's lap as I was reading him a book). We fed Carter as many snacks as he would eat. I read books over and over again and pulled out a bunch of the toys I'd bought the day before. Carter was mostly quiet - he let some of his happy screams. But we managed to distract him before he threw any tantrums or melted down. He was by far the quietest of the three young children on the flight. We had several comments from people around us on how good of a baby he was.
Carter did fine with the changes in pressure when we were ascending and descending. He had his paci whenever he wanted it and we tried to feed him and give him his sippy cup as well. On the descent into San Francisco, Carter stuck his finger in one of his ears and gave us a funny look. He got over it pretty quickly, but it was kind of funny seeing him trying to figure out what was going on.
When we got into San Francisco, we got our rental car and checked into our hotel around 3 pm We stayed at the Larkspur near the airport so that we had an excuse to have a rental car Brian could expense and could eat at more casual restaurants with Carter (it was actually cheaper to stay here and have a rental car than stay downtown without a car).
We decided to try to keep Carter up as long as we could and get him adjusted to the three hour time difference by getting him very off his schedule. We hoped he would then sleep his normal amount of nighttime hours rather than getting up at the time that felt normal (which would have been around 3 am PST).
After checking into the hotel and getting them to deliver a crib (actually, a small Pack 'n Play) to the room, we went to Panera for a late lunch / early dinner. When we finished eating, Carter fell asleep immediately in the car. We decided to let him have a nap and drove downtown to the Moscone Center so that Brian could register for his conference.
On the way back to the hotel, we stopped at a grocery store to get food for Carter for the week. We got to the hotel around 6:30 pm and managed to keep Carter up to 8 pm. We were all exhausted from the long day of travel. We had a suite again so Carter got the living room area. This time the bathroom wasn't connected to the bedroom (and I have to pee too many times at night already - pregnancy is so much fun!), but luckily we were able to set the fan on the heating unit to run continuously so it muffled out any noise we made at night. There was also someone with a puppy across the hall that barked and barked and barked so the fan helped with that as well.
It was a long and somewhat stressful day, but we made it to San Francisco and were so proud that Carter did so well!
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