Good Traveler

Jada made the trek with us out to California yesterday, and did pretty
good traveling. Hopefully, in the minds of our neighboring
passengers, her few short bursts of loud crying were more than offset
by her easy and breezy socializing with them: she'd go down the aisle
one row, turn to the person in the aisle seat, and, if the person was
friendly, try to worm her way down that row. It was like she was
trying to work the crowd like a good politician.

Her friendliness carried over to my parents. She'd never met my dad
before but they fast became buddies, especially once he let Jada play
with these two ornate lanterns that they have in their living room.
And it had been four months since she'd seen my mom; it's a good thing
Jada can walk good, because she might already be too heavy for my
skinny mom to carry for more than a few minutes! Even my sister, who
lives in New York City, hadn't seen Jada for about six weeks, so Jada
greeted her with a big zombie hug.

Last night, she fell asleep right around the same time she does at
home, even though 1) there was a three-hour difference, 2) we'd
rousted her out of bed three hours earlier than usual that morning,
and 3) we'd spent the entire day on planes and in airports. In that
regard, she did better than us: I stayed up later than usual because I
was worried about our luggage, which apparently didn't quite make the
tight connection in Dallas and which we're still waiting on.

She did wake up a few hours later, sobbing and gasping for breath.
Probably a little scared to find herself in a completely new place.
It took about a half-hour between Amy and me to get her back down, and
then she was out for the night, waking up right around when she
normally does the next morning.

It's lunchtime now, and she's taking a little longer of a nap than
usual (1.5 hours and counting, at this point). This might work in our
favor, if it allows her to stay up later than usual, since we have
family festivities the next two nights that will go on well past
Jada's usual bedtime. What a good little traveler she is so far.