Look Mommy, No Hands!

Bella has been doing new tricks left and right here lately. Her aunt Launa seems to have some special ability to help Bella achieve some of her developmental milestones. She was present when Bella first flipped over. She was there the week Bella first started to crawl. And now, guess who was around when she started walking? You guessed it. Aunt Launa.

About 2 weeks ago, Bella and I embarked on a monumentus journey together across the country, just the 2 of us. We started at 4AM on a Wed morning as Mommy drove us to the airport and dropped us off. From there, I packed myself up like a mule (car seat, work lap top, diaper back pack, and Bella in the Bjorn) and waddled the 2 of us through to check our bags and get a boarding pass. We braved the security line only to find out my boarding pass needs to have "infant" typed on it. Back to the line to get a new boarding pass. Back through security. Bella is taking all this like a champ. Smiling at everyone and playing hide and seek pretending to be bashful. Squaking at the funny guy over there with the ear piece in his ear. Yelling at the lady with the McDonalds bag who is not sharing her coffee.

So we make it to the gate, and I turn her lose as I buy 2 water bottles from the vending machine. She crawls around pleased with her freedom. Until she tries to eat a sun flower seed she finds on the carpet. She cries. No problem, Daddy has his keys, and we know those are good for at least 15min of attention capture. Crap! Left them in the ignition so Mommy can drive home. No problem, Sebastian to the rescue! She played with Sebastian for about 20min until we started boarding.

The flight to Atlanta (ok, so it wasn't really all the way across the country) was a good one. The airline left a seat open next to me so I could put her in her car seat. I only bumped her head a little bit as I got the seat installed and her safely into it. The guy next to me has 3 little girls, and he said I made the whole process look easy. He has never flown with his little girls. He didn't know we had done this about 2 months ago for our trip to Michigan. Bella is practically a frequent flier! :)

At about 7AM, as the plane takes off, I pour her bottle and mix it up so she can drink as the plane goes up to help her ears equalize the pressure. After she is finished, she munches on Lovie for about 2 minutes, and she is out for the rest of the flight. Whew! The only hard part of the trip was going to the wrong baggage claim after we landed. I carried her and the car seat and our 2 bags for about 2 miles farther than I had to as we proceeded to the wrong baggage claim and back again. Luckily, Grampa was waiting there with our bags for us.

The trip was a great one. Grampa and Gramdma Dyer got to spend some quality time with Bella, and my sister Launa and her boyfriend Scott also got to visit for the weekend, so it was nice having us all together. We got to go to the Aquarium in Atlanta, and that was a nice experience. Bella was fascinated with all of the fish and all of the people as well. She liked the sea otters the best and cried because she couldn't go in there with them. She also cried when we had to leave that exhibit. Life is clearly not fair.

She really started taking more than just 1-2 steps on this trip. Prior to this trip, Bella would pull herself up on some furnature and sometimes from the middle of the floor, and she would take a step or two to bridge the gap between 2 pieces of furnature or to walk to one of us. But on this trip, she started taking 4,5,6, and more steps to try to get from one place to another. One stretch, she took 14 steps before plopping down to crawl.

Now as of yesterday, she is finally walking as a preferrence. She pretty much walks everywhere when she wants to follow us or go into another room to find some trouble.

The movie clip below is Aunt Launa's baiting technique to get her to walk :)

The trip back was much more challenging than the trip there. There were no open seats as there were 40-50 Army folks trying to get back to families for a short leave before they finished their training. Bella was very cranky that she had not eaten breakfast yet. She actually fell asleep in my arms on the plane before it took off. I fed her once she woke up about 1hr into the flight. She played hide and seek with the person in front of us. He was asleep, but Bella enjoyed hiding from him even though he was oblivious to the game. I told the lady next to us, "You didn't know you would be entertaining a baby on this flight did you?" She told me "no" in a flat voice and then said that there was a first time for everything. She turned out to be real nice, and enjoyed playing with Bella.

Alas, we made it home safely, and Mommy and Bella were reunited once again. This was the longest they had been apart since Bella was in the nicu.

Thanks Guys for the great trip we had. We really enjoyed ourselves!