Baby Babble

We already knew Lyla did well on road trips thanks to the drive we took to Portland over Labor Day weekend.
When I found out I’d be going to Las Vegas Jan. 6-9 for the Consumer Electronics Show (hi, my name is Kris, I’m a technoholic) to do some blogging for a cell phone website I’ve been involved with for more than seven years, I figured I might as well take Jason and Lyla along with me, after all we did live there for two and a half years while Jason finished his business degree at UNLV.
We still have friends there, including Mike and Emmily, who have an eight month old cutie named Kate. Emmily and I used to work for competing weekly papers and endured marathon city council and planning commission sessions at the same table at Henderson City Hall. Now that we both have kiddos who are just six months apart, we have had a whole different area of life to bond over, which is pretty awesome. We got to meet Kate in Portland (our friends were up there at the same time we were) so Emmily was a great resource in planning our trip to Vegas since she had flown with a little one younger than Lyla.
I took her advice and bought tickets on Southwest Airlines. It was spot on. We had a good experience both ways.
But, I am a little nuts. For financial reasons, I chose to fly out at 6 a.m. for our outbound trip to Vegas. For Lyla, this worked out fine, she slept most of the plane ride there. We didn’t buy her a ticket because it would’ve cost a whole lot more (I set this all up last minute) for her to have a seat than for her to be in my lap, which was free. And since she slept all but half an hour of the plane ride it worked out fine for her to not have her own seat.
We did bring our own car seat on the recommendation of my good friend Bambee, who has traveled extensively with her kiddo, McKailen. It was good advice because though we could have rented a seat from the company we rented a car from, Bambee pointed out that we would have no idea of the history of the seat, where it had been or what kind of shape it was in. Bambee knows car seat safety inside and out so I trust her expert opinion on the topic.
The first night Lyla struggled a bit with sleeping in a strange place. We stayed with an old friend of Jason’s, a woman named Julie whom he has known for 15 years, going back to when he started college at Montana State University in Bozeman, Mont. Julie had a pack and play, which was handy, and a nice sized guest room.
Lyla slept fine the rest of the trip but that first night she had a hard time settling down. I’m not sure what it was about it but I can only guess it was due to a long day traveling, a new place, and so on.
I was super nervous about this whole trip with Lyla. I didn’t know how she’d handle the plane, how she’d handle being somewhere else, how she’d do being around completely other new people, but she was a rock star.
While we were in Vegas Lyla and I had an awesome play date with Emmily and Kate. Yes, I flew 1,600 miles to Sin City on vacation to attend a convention and scheduled a play date for the time we were there. That’s how you know you’re a parent.
Lyla and Kate played really well together. Thanks to Emmily for the photos.

The other cool thing about the play date, aside from giving me a break from the insanity of CES (more than 100,000 attend the show), was it allowed Jason to have some grown up time with Julie. They went bowling. He got a chance to hang out and be an adult. It’s good to have that balance as a newish parent.
One thing I learned not to do is rent a small sedan when you have a car seat. A Chevy Cobalt just isn’t big enough! Next time I’ll rent an SUV. It made me appreciate our Jeep that much more — as did driving in the snow the night we got back after going to a basketball game at Kentlake — as a family car. It’s just so roomy.
On the other hand, I also realized that from here on out, I’m going to rent cars from Enterprise. I’ve had nothing but good experiences with them. That’s a free plug, by the way, I was not compensated in any way for that endorsement.
The plane ride back was great, too, Lyla slept most of the way and as we came into SeaTac she looked out the window enthralled with the scene unfolding below. I really could not have asked for a better experience.
In any case, I think our next family vacation that includes travel will be a road trip to Yellowstone National Park, most likely in September. I like to take time off the week of my birthday. That should be fun. I’ve never been to Yellowstone so I’m looking forward to it.
All my friends who told me on Facebook months ago that traveling with your little ones early on helps them get used to it and makes it easier as they get older were absolutely right. It’s good to know Lyla handles it so well because I want to travel with her as much as possible as it provides invaluable life experiences that will broaden her world view and hopefully help her become a well-rounded person.
Yeah, everything’s a teachable moment, even walking through the Forum Shops at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas.