Our journey Oslo to Chicago

Our first leg was Oslo to London Heathrow. The flight itself was ok, but Heathrow was a big big pain. (This was before all the bogus terror-plot stuff happened). We had to take 2 busses around the airport, and the signage was less than adequate. We ended up waiting for 2 hours in a mall (“duty free” shopping area), with no gate listed on the announcement board. We came out of the bathroom to find our flight suddenly listed as “last call — proceed immediately to gate”. And proceed to run to the gate, along with 50 or so other people. We waited in the wrong (long) line, their card readers were not working, Ruby pulled one of those heavy divider poles down on herself, we had to check our stroller in a different place… yadda yadda. It was hectic. We were the last people on the plane, and our seat was at the back. Dragging two kids and all their stuff to the back of the plane… arg. But the staff was great. So wonderful (British Airways). The plane was pretty full, but they asked a couple of people to move out of a center row of seats that had some empty ones. That was nice, to have 4 seats to ourselves. The children were able to lay down to sleep, and they both slept about 5 hours of the flight. I even got some sleep!

There wasn’t much for the children to do, or even anywhere for us to comfortable sit down and relax. There was this one small play table, though, and we spent a while here.

We were wearing our jackets because it was very cold on the plane.

We got C his first set of little Legos right before the trip. He has some Duplo blocks, which he loves, but I thought he might be ready for the little ones. And it was good to have something new and exciting (and more portable!). Ruby liked them, too.

It was actually quite chilly on the plane. I put the blanket up around her head to shield her from the light, too, since not everyone had closed their window shades yet.

Thankfully, C was rather flexible about sleeping on the plane. We layed out his little bed roll/ sleeping bag, we read a book and sang a song and he went right to sleep. I was worried he would be more difficult, but everything went fine.

I propped up a pillow to shade him from the light, too.