Maddie's First Plane Trip!

We just got back last night from CO. We were there a little shy of a week and it was Maddie's first plane trip. The trip went remarkably well except for one main rough spot.

On the flight there Maddie slept on the empty plane seat for some of the flight and just played with us for the rest of the time. She didn't make any negative noise. (She's still a chatter box!) On the flight back she had a couple small rough periods lasting maybe a minute or two, but otherwise had excellent behavior. Her Dad was even able to get her to lie down and take a nap on his lap. Impressive!

The only real rough spot we had was the fact that except for that extra short nap on the plane there, she didn't sleep the first day. Then she was so over tired that she was weirdly cranky even into the next day. She would scream when you would just lay her on her back (which makes it difficult to change her clothes or her diaper). So I finally reached a point, after saying several times - "I've never seen her like this" where I forced her to nap. I did the same 5 minute check in thing I had done before and she eventually went down. It was painful because it wasn't just a couple minutes of unhappy behavior. I'm sure it was much more difficult being in a new place with new smells. But she did great and once she started sleeping again, she was again the fantastic happy baby that we all love. (We love the cranky one too - we just prefer the fantastic happy one!)

Today when I put her down for her nap, she went down with no protests and fell asleep right away. It was nice. I took this time to write this post and to write out her nap winddown routine. I'm going to work with our Nanny to get her napping better with her too because she usually doesn't sleep too much with her.