travel

Babies, preschooler

Making History in Santa Monica

Bodhi

This past Friday, I made history. I rode the Metro line in Santa Monica on its opening day. I’ve been waiting patiently for it to be built, personally encouraging progress by screaming “train tracks!” every time my parents drove over the train tracks during construction. I would always ask them when we would take the train to downtown LA. We will soon, but Friday we took it two stops to a place with art galleries called Bergamont Station.

It was fun. Everyone should ride trains. Here’s a video about it that I narrated.

Babies

I’ve Been Fired From My Airline Pilot Job

Lee Schneider

baby-dinnerI thought I was doing a great job on the LA to Honolulu route and then turning around and doing the LA to JFK route with just a week’s rest.  You know how it goes, you clock in, settle in behind that thingie that looks like half a wheel, lean back, adjust your captain’s cap, move some levers around, call the tower, make small talk with the crew, couple of announcements in the deepest voice you can muster (for a baby) and then put the plane on autopilot. Then it’s Words With Friends for the rest of the flight.

I often enjoyed a fancy meal upon reaching my cosmopolitan destinations, with particular attention to the cheese plate, sometimes with a frisky little glass of Gamay. (Placed just out of frame in the picture above.) It looked like I was going to settle in for a long, profitable career in the skies.

Didn’t go that way, though. Shockingly, there were too many complaints about me kicking the passengers’ seats from behind, some adverse comments about my mingling with strangers and grabbing at their iPads, too much walking up and down the aisle sobbing. Hey, haven’t you felt like that sometimes? Just walking up and down an airplane for five hours at a time screaming your guts out? Try it sometime. I know I have.

Maybe you don’t realize that passenger safety is my priority on these long flights, so that’s why I have to test the integrity of the latch that secures the tray table more than a thousand times, flipping down the table and flipping it up again. I have to press all the buttons on the entertainment system. I have to check the integrity of the window shades at least five hundred times per flight. That’s important. What if the sun were in your eyes and the shade didn’t work? You’d want your money back, wouldn’t you? And you paid a lot of money for that flight.

It was, alas, all about money when my parents fired me from my big time airline job. They argued that people paid a lot for their seats. Despite flying the plane, despite all the entertainment I provided, despite testing the integrity of the systems, well, all that just wasn’t enough to make it work. Plus I was the highest paid toddler flying a jet, and we all know what happens to the highest paid and last hired.

I pleaded for the job, resorting to my most common argument: loud crying. Sadly, it didn’t matter that  on the last flight I took a quiet nap from Pennsylvania all the way till Kansas. It mattered that I raged from New York to Pennsylvania, and then through Arizona, Utah, and not to mention large stretches of the Great Lakes, and big parts of the Pacific Ocean on the Hawaii route.

Toddlers are just not that good at flying airplanes. Even though we try. We just can’t do it quietly.

Babies

My East Coast Tour

Bodhi 1 Comment

From time to time you have to reach out to your base. You know, touch the grass roots. Give a listen to the vox popoli. Press the flesh, smile at people you’ve never met before, and squeeze a few cheeks.

No, I am not declaring for Mayor of New York even though I know I can beat Anthony Weiner. (Note to self: do not open a Twitter account.) I do know, however, that a lot of east coasters read this blog, and I told my parents it was time to put in an appearance over there. (I don’t know where the East Coast is but we took a plane to get here.)

I already met my grandpa Al and sister Carolyn on previous occasions, so it was nice to check in with them again. My mommy took me over to meet the Hudson River, which in my view closely resembles other rivers. (I’m trying to impress you, but I’m faking it. I’ve never actually seen any other rivers.)

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New York is a high-power city and I had to struggle a little to keep up the pace. Here I am enjoying a quick shot of espresso under my mommy’s loving eye.

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We took a long drive up to Rhode Island, which for some reason involves arguing over directions and which road to take. I told my parents to turn on the GPS but they didn’t listen until they’d already missed the connection from the Merritt Parkway back to I-95. It’s hard, but sometimes I have to just let them make these mistakes so they’ll learn.

In Rhode Island I checked in with my grandma who calls herself Bopie. I looked at Wikipedia but there isn’t anything for a Bopie there, so I will have to ask her about that. Then I met my other granddad for the first time soon after we arrived in Jamestown. I’d say detente was immediate and there was a frank exchange of ideas.

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I think if I do run for mayor he would vote for me.

We are staying in a nice house and I am learning to sleep in a Pack n Play no matter where it is placed. On the coffee table there was a magazine about something called golf. The cover showed a shot of a man using a stick to hit a defenseless little white ball. The headline on the cover said, ‘Long, Straight and Hard.’ From this, I have determined that reading about golf is not suitable for young children.

Later, at night, way past my usual bedtime, we went to someplace called a Yacht Club to celebrate my granddad’s birthday. I think it is nice that yachts have a place to gather and have a cocktail. My granddad is way into the double digits, but I don’t know how old because I haven’t tried counting that high. It was an exciting evening, so exciting that they gave me my own Secret Service detail.
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Toward the end of the night I broke away to get in some reading about boats. I realize I like boats. That must be why they named me Boat-y.

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Babies

LAX to JFK

Bodhi 3 Comments

I’ve been so busy posing for pictures that my mom posts to Facebook, not to mention hanging around with my family here on the East Coast, with all the meet and greet I’ve been doing, sightseeing downtown in my baby carrier, and sucking furiously on my grandmother’s hand, I almost forgot to post this account of my first plane trip. Here’s my report.

I thought it would be good to start the day bright and early by spitting up on my dad just as the taxi pulled up to the front door. Keep them on their toes. Remind them they are not hipsters but instead parents of an infant, the people who will be despised by everyone else on the plane.

Well, that’s an exaggeration. I made some noise as everyone was finding their seats, but I don’t think people got into despising anybody. As a matter of fact, there were plenty of seats after I let out a few test shrieks and everybody else asked to get off and said they would take a later flight instead. My dad had to go out into the airport and convince them all to come back, promising that I would be good.

I was pretty good the whole way.

I did some screaming when it was nap time, but I do that anyway. The nice woman seated next to us decided to get up suddenly. I think I heard her in the back pleading with the flight attendant, saying something like ‘Wasn’t that a FedEX plane on the other runway? I could package myself and get to New York that way. Packages are quiet, aren’t they? All the other packages, I mean. We’d all be quiet.’  She sounded desperate, as grownups so often do.

Since this was my first time flying in a plane (not by astral projection, which I do all the time, but that’s another blog) I’d like to offer a few pointers.

  • The view out the window is interesting, but the flashing seatbelt light is really, really fascinating.
  • Like wine, breast milk tastes different at 30,000 feet up.
  • You don’t need a seatbelt, just have your mommy hold you the whole time.
  • If your dad doesn’t realize there is a changing table in the bathroom, you can have a lot of fun dispensing soap with your foot as he crams you on that tiny shelf.
  • If you smile, even the person whose seat back you have been kicking for hours will pretend to like you.
  • When a baby falls asleep with his mouth open, it’s really cute. When an adult does it, not so much.

Anyhoo, gotta run. It was a good trip and I’ve enjoyed my time in New York. It was cold, but it turns out that I like cold weather.

We’re getting ready to fly back to LA and I need my sleep so I can stay awake for the whole five hour plane ride. That way, my dad can save on WiFi. He won’t need to buy it on this trip, because I will be his inflight entertainment.