Z.M.C. - First flight

Zachary flew on his first airplane on 9/14. The three of us flew to D.C. to visit the entire Counts clan. Zach did great on the flights. Art gave him a B+ and I have him an A- for the flights to D.C., and we both gave him an A+ for the flights back - mainly because he slept the entire flights, waking only to eat. He is such a little flirt. He would start to get fussy on the plane and a flight attendant would come talk to him, and he'd smile real big at her and just wiggle with joy. He's going to be trouble with the ladies! :)

Zach (we're thinking of shortening this to Zac) did not do so well in another crib. He napped in the pack & play, which Railey let us borrow, with no problems, but sleeping at night was a huge issue. The first night he just refused. After about 3 hours of him waking up screaming his 'panic' scream, we finally just let him sleep in our bed so we could get some sleep. Of course he had no problem sleeping there, and slept until about 6am before wanting to be fed. The second night was a little better, and the third night was slightly better than that. All three nights he woke up screaming after about an hour after falling asleep, but by the third night, he only did that once, instead of repeatedly like the other nights.

Our flights were delayed coming home, and we got home about 2 hours after we were scheduled. We were hoping Zach (Zac?) would just stay asleep so we could put him to bed, but he woke up at the airport and stayed awake in the car, babbling to himself. I fed him when we got home (12:30am), and was hoping he'd fall asleep eating, but he didn't. So I just put him in his crib awake, hoping for the best. What was VERY cute is that he rolled over on his side, smiled real big, and started "petting" the side of his crib, as though saying "I'm HOME!" He batted his bears (on a mobile) a bit, started sucking his thumb/fingers and fell asleep with no problem. We were very relieved! But we thought it was very cute that he seemed to be happy to be home... even though it was 55 degrees in the house (we had left the swamp cooler on for Dexter, not knowing that it would get so cold). It was so cold that we had Zach sleep in a hat and Art slept in his jeans - b/c it was "too cold to change".

All in all it was a great trip and we all had a really good time. One of the best all-family trips!

Attached are 2 pictures: One of Zachary taking a nap on the plane (you can see the arm rest), and the other of Art schlepping all the bags and Zach- we packed a back for Janneke and Karl each to bring to Germany for us when they come in November and December respectively.