HUCK'S 30TH FLIGHT AND TODDLER-TESTED FLYING TIPS

my entire family is flying in tonight from portland, medford, and salt lake city for the week. they're all landing in various airports sometime early tomorrow morning, and then cabbing their way over to my little apartment like a flock of lovin seagulls. it's pretty fantastic to imagine. my house is a wreck and i have thirty million emails i've been avoiding (does anybody else get serious ADD the minute a gmail window opens?), and i only just now moved the turkey to the fridge to thaw, but i have a real good feeling about this thanksgiving. me and my empty uterus, we're going to kill it this weekend.

in light of the fact that all of my family members are spending their nights tonight floating in the air somewhere over the midwest (related: you're sitting in a chair... in the sky), i figured today would be as good as any to immortalize, with fondness, the final days of huck's lap child status. (shed a tear.)

about two weeks before his second birthday i had the honor of escorting sir huck the great on his 29th and 30th trip on an airplane. who is this kid and what is with his jet set life. i do count each individual leg of a trip as a separate flight, (1) because, it is, and (2) because, if you had to coordinate nursing on take off and landing and find appropriately quiet ways to entertain your kid in between times so they don't annoy fellow passengers or leave permanent marks on other people's belongings, then you would too.

i have no idea how this kid managed to log 30 air plane rides in just two years except to say, done none of my family live in places where direct flights come very cheaply.

okay okay so, here's what's grand about flying with an almost-two-year old and here are all my bestest tricks for making it go as smoothly as possible.

do bring your stroller to the airport. you can check it at the gate for free, and you're guaranteed a place to hang your bags when you're cruising through the terminal. also you're not in danger of losing your toddler, cause he's strapped to something. 

don't think that just because your stroller is being checked at the gate that you shouldn't still bring your stroller bag. you can stuff that stroller bag with any old thing... car seat, pack and play... um, your own luggage... and then you can check that sucker for free. nobody will care that you have your stroller with you and that your stroller bag somehow weighs a million pounds. at least, nobody's cared with us yet, and we've done this every flight.

don't bring too much with you as carry-on. you won't need most of it anyway, and it's a lot to juggle if your kid starts squirming. plus you want all the leg room you can manage, so think bare minimum and remember that most airplanes are stocked with any essentials you might need in a pinch (wet paper towels, snacks, water bottles).

do bring special toddler approved headphones. they have volume limits so your kid can't accidentally turn the sound way up and damage his ear drums, and also they are hysterically cute. he can wear them to drown out ambient noise if he needs a break, and he can also wear them when watching movies on your phone or laptop or ipad and not bother your neighbors. 

do let your kid watch tv at home from time to time so he knows how to sit still and enjoy a movie. if your kid's never sat through a movie before, chances he's going to sit through one now are that you need him to are probably not so great. 

do plan a diaper change halfway through the flight. it's a fun excuse to get up and stretch your legs and it breaks up the monotony of sitting in one place for too long the young dude. once you've finished changing a diaper in that cramped bathroom you sort of saunter out of there like a hero. 'cause you are a hero. that's crazy that you just pulled that off in there.

do nurse your toddler till he's two. i'm just kidding, i'm not trying to start a fight here. no, but if you want to, you should, because then you can nurse during take off and landing and if you're lucky, he'll fall asleep on you and then you can read a magazine. yesss! (for the record, though i've only done it a very few times, i've never once encountered a single person who's given me a hard time for breastfeeding my toddler in public. hooray for the human race!)

do wear something drapey and layered if you are planning to nurse in the air, so you're not side-boobing your neighbor too much. 

do bring a scarf or cardigan that can double as a pillow, blanket, swaddler, arm propper, or mess cleaner upper. always always travel with a giant zip lock bag. 

finally, when in doubt, the reverse cam on your phone is entertaining for at least three minutes. sometimes that's all you need.

i will say, it doesn't hurt that my kid is literally the greatest.  he was just born a great traveler and i can't probably take any credit for it. (though being his mom means that i'm allowed to when my ego needs the boost. right?)

there. those are my tips. 

happy holiday flying to you!

update:
you can get those orange headphones HERE!

TYPICAL MORNING AT OUR HOUSE

any time huck disappears from the living room, or if i ever start to think that things have gotten a little too quiet in the house, it's almost always because huck has squirreled himself away to the big bed. the closer my footsteps get to the bedroom door, the louder the muffled giggles under the covers become. it's a silly game we play at least three times a day, and it is wonderful every time. the only thing huck loves more than hiding out in the big bed is getting caught hiding out in the big bed. 

the other day i handed huck a cup of yogurt for breakfast and finally got around to doing some stuff around the kitchen, when i noticed i wasn't hearing huck's usual breakfast noises coming from his usual breakfast spot.

luckily, my camera was close by and my footsteps were extra quiet that day.

stinker. ;)

WHILE WE'RE AT IT...

let's just go way back. let's go all the way, way way back.

when i first started blogging, blogs were just these giant walls of text where you wrote down all the mundane, mind numbing details about your life because nobody was really going to read it, and also you couldn't put pictures in blogs, and the internet made screeching noises when you tried to get on it. 

a reader left a comment on my last post along the lines of, "you guys seem to have lived some very different lives together," and when i read it i laughed and thought, AND HOW! and then i thought it would be funny to do a little cliffs notes version of the holbrook family history. you know, a "what you may have missed while i wasn't writing my blog" sort of deal. let's be honest you didn't miss any of it, and then i thought, that is the stupidest idea you've ever had, natalie. and then of course i had to do it.

i had so much fun looking through these old photos and putting this together. so thank you for indulging me.

after the jump! our humble, humble beginnings.

TODAY I'M THINKING ABOUT

i always get nostalgic for idaho at the start of the holiday season.  sometimes i miss it with everything i've got. i always knew that i would, but i still find a way to be surprised by it. human nature, you weird old thing.

brandon and i sometimes talk about moving back to moscow. someday when debts are paid off and the kids are all grown. i like to think we'll luck out and that little dream boat of a house on d street will go on the market, maybe those old horses will be around too, and i'll finally get myself a little hen named bossy.

it's a real nice dream.

i was browsing through some old old old photos yesterday and thought i'd share a few that made me smile. i call it "what i miss most about our little old ida-home" (after the jump!)

AND SNIFFLY SUNDAY WALKS TOO

the holbrooks are a mess of seasonal allergies and change-in-the-weather sniffles these days. oh brother. and it seems like huck's runny nose has figured out how to come and go based on the situation. for instance, on a saturday afternoon he was dry as a bone ,but five minutes into church and he looks like a teeming cesspool of pestilence, and the last thing i'm going to do is keep my "looks sick" kid at church in case he really is sick, because then i'd have to forfeit my "keep your sick kids home!" moral high ground. moral high ground is so hard to come by these days. fiscal cliffs! 

i think huck's runny nose is conspiring to make us look bad, is what.  

so sunday morning found us in our usual routine, where i'm always running 15 minutes late so the boys go on ahead of me and save me a spot, when brandon texted to tell me that huck's nose had started it's usual theatrics once they'd settled in, so they were coming home. i was mid brushing my hair but managed to crawl back in bed before i'd even finished tapping out "sounds good" in response. 

four hours and a huge pan of rice krispy treats later and huck was all healthy as a horse and our cabin fever had set in, so we went out for a walk. 

and congratulations, you have just sat through two paragraphs and two sentences all about henry's runny nose. yeahhhhh.

but the weather was just perfect and the leaves were actually swirling. all around! it was pretty ideal. 

good. our failing health and the weather. now we've about covered it.

sooo, i instagrammed this one and it made it to the popular page, so life goal achieved. 

i'd always wondered what that would feel like and it turns out it feels just like deleting a million spam comments would feel.

i'm fairly convinced that most of the 6,000 new followers it got me are mostly robots.

(you read that right. six thousand. whaaaaaat?)

but in case you want to follow and aren't a robot, my instagram account is @natthefatrat.

(i'm pretty sure the fuss will die down soon... right?)

the upper west is in FULL FALL REGALIA.

always a pleasure to see it. thanks, central park.