Have Baby, Will Travel...Through 9 Time Zones

Over the river and through the woods, to grandmother's house we go...

Playing with hats while we packed

Poor Savannah, she didn't just go over the river and through the woods.  To visit her grandmother, she had to spend the night in a Dubai hotel to leave early the next morning on a 16 hr. direct flight to Houston.

Checking in for our Dubai to Houston flight

I was so nervous about the long trip with a 7 month old!  Even if everything went perfect, without any delays, we would still be on the road for almost 36 hours.  We had to leave Abu Dhabi in the afternoon on the afternoon before our flight.  We piled our bags in a van from the hotel and headed for a hotel near the Dubai airport.

The next morning, we loaded all our bags at the crack of dawn into another van, and headed for what was supposed to be a 9am flight.  Well, cut to us boarding the plane, starting to settle into our seat, buckling Savannah's carseat into the bulkhead row when...over the intercom, the pilot announces we have to 'deplane' because we apparently have too much fuel, they need to empty the tank and start over.

...and we were up from the 16 hour direct flight to 17.5 hours.  Once we boarded, got buckled in again and the pilot comes over the intercom again...

With the rapid change in temperature and crazy Dubai heat, calibrating the exact amount of fuel we need for a long 16 hour flight is proving to be a problem.  Apparently we can't be loaded with the fuel that we need for the trip because the heat is making the fuel too heavy...so we're going to have to stop in Toronto to refuel.  Grrrrrr

...and we're up to 20 hours.
I was panicked!!

As if travel with a 7 month old wasn't dicey enough, now I had to find a way to entertain the munchkin for nearly 20 hours!

Well, my little Savannah shocked us.  She cried for a total of maybe 15 minutes over the entire course of the trip!  It was usually right before one of her naps when she had a hard time falling asleep with the overhead lights or noise from other crying babies.

I brought a couple of blankets to throw on the floor for her when she felt like crawling.  We walked to the back of the plane and visited with the flight attendants as they prepared to serve dinner.  Savannah is only ever feisty right before bedtime.  This is what I feared the most, not being able to help her get to sleep.  She was a little fussy on the flight, but once I got her in the borrowed bulkhead bassinet, she was out for a few hours.  She napped the rest of the time in her seat.

I can't imagine having to fly without her having her own seat and carseat on board.  Once we were in the US, we took a couple of additional flights from Houston to Birmingham to visit with Adam's family.  Those short, 1.5 hour flights where Savannah flew on my lap felt more difficult than the 20 hours! We brought along my iPad, loaded with Disney videos, as a last resort...but she didn't need them.

She was happy with her toys, bouncing on our lap and looking around the plane for people to smile at.
The only really difficult part was the jet lag after the flight back.  I had read travel across time zones from east to west was easier than the way back.  That's an understatement! She had almost no jet lag after the trip there, but we struggled to adjust her back on her sleep schedule for nearly 7 days after arriving back in Abu Dhabi!

Well, if we were able to tackle that, I'm pretty confident in Savannah's globe trotting abilities!