I keep my seatbelt on the whole time unless I need to get up to go to the bathroom.
Jordan also stays in his carseat the whole time unless he needed a diaper change or needed to potty.
Are you planning to keep him RFing on the plane? It will be sooo much easier if you do.
Make up a snack box for him that has a variety of foods in it.
I don't know what time of day you are flying, but if you can manage to schedule meal time while on the plane, that will help use up some time. Jordan also always fell asleep on the plane and slept for at least 2 hours.
You will also want to bring something to entertain him. At that age, Jordan loved DVDs so we brought a portable DVD player with us on the plane. We put his DVDs in one of these CD visor sleeves that is meant for the car. He spent lots of time just switching out DVDs in the player.
It would never have even occured to me to take him out of his seat and let him sit on my lap, because he wouldn't have been happy just sitting on my lap. He would want to climb all over the place and make friends with every passenger on the plane.
BTW,
This is what Jordan's snack box looked like for the flight we took just this month.
http://alvin.smugmug.com/photos/456091037_TSAxM-S.jpg
And this was our set up to get through the airport. I used the Traveling Toddler to hook the seat to the suitcase.
http://alvin.smugmug.com/photos/456091340_Pds5S-M-1.jpg
Thank you so much for the pictures. I was planning to bring a snack of some sort for him but hadn't gotten much past the cheese and crackers idea.
I'm planning to keep him rf'ing on the plane just because I think then there's a chance he'll sleep if he gets tired. Our flight leaves at 8am which is normally still a time he's in bed asleep, so I don't have a lot of hope on the sleep front, but you never know.
(For those of you with dropping jaws at him still asleep at 8am, we have an atypical schedule... my kids usually aren't in bed for the night until 11pm and usually sleep until 10 or 10:30
)
We don't have a portable DVD player but maybe it's worth considering something like that for him. He's not a real TV watcher in general because dd isn't allowed TV, so I don't know how much of a distraction it would be for him.
The longest drive he's been on aside from the one trip we took when he was 7 months old is really only 2hrs. He's one of those on the go kids and a lot of times even a 2hr trip is one that has him starting to fuss by the time we're close to our destination. I'm sure that me sitting beside him will make that a different situation though.
We always wear our seatbelt if we are sitting and DS always keeps it on.
I'm pretty sure you have him RF but have you considered the CARES harness for the flight? Not sure if he is 22lbs or not yet but if he was FF at least he could watch the TV. West Jet has the kids channel (can't remember what it is call
).
ETA: After posting I checked out your siggy and see he is RF'ing and 26lbs.
Yeah, I'm planning to rf him on the plane. I think he'll be more comfortable in his own seat too than in a cares harness. I'd have no problems with dd in one, but I just don't think Jonas would be comfortable and that he'd probably create havoc... at least the familiarity of his seat should help with all the changes.
For being 2yrs old he still isn't quite at the point of fully understanding explanations. I know he understands things more than we give him credit for, but the point about him being very unhappy to have to get back in the seat once out is a very good point.
I haven't flown myself since I was 15 which was 17 long years ago, so this will be a very new experience for both of us. I bought a gogo kidz to use with his seat so that takes care of keeping him contained while moving through the different areas of the airport and while loading the plane. I googled seat layouts and stuff last night, and know I'll be able to choose seats when doing online check-in, so I'm more comfortable in that aspect, and I took the tour of the Edmonton airport online last night too.
Dh and dd will be accompanying us as far as possible... does anyone happen to know if they ever let family on the other side of security, or no? From what I found it looks like ds and I have to be through security an hour before departure. There are activities and stores and restaurants on the other side, I'm just mostly thinking that it would be nice for dd to spend some last bit of time with me before I go.. though one hour in the scheme of multiple days isn't much.
And I just have to say, thank goodness for all of you more experienced travellers who can hold my hand while I try to work out the technicalities.
I'm a planner.. helps me be comfortable when going in to new situations, so the more I know about ahead of time the easier the whole thing will be. :thumbsup: