Winter Wonderland

I woke up the morning of my flight to Copenhagen to one of the biggest weather surprises since moving to Stockholm: Snow. Snow covering everything. It is mid-April. Since it was a Saturday morning, very early (I had to leave the house by 7am) nothing had been cleared yet and walking with a toddler and a carry-on suitcase was a challenge to say the least. So much of a challenge that I had to give up on catching the train that would have provided be with a cheap, but slow journey to the airport and instead head for the Arlanda Express, a 260 Skr ($38) train ride to the airport. Zoe had no patience with the snow and kept wanting to be carried ("up, up") and I almost lost my cool before we even got to the station, a merely 5 minute walk away. When I finally got to the airport, with half an hour to spare, we cleared security flawlessly with Zoe going through the metal detector after me, and boarded just as easily. In the back of my head I knew something was wrong. I have flown from Scandinavian airports enough to know that snow means de-icing and that the airports' de-icing equipment is not always ready to rock and roll; in Copenhagen for example, they drive the planes over to the de-icing area, which always delays everything. I was right. As Zoe closed her little orange extension belt, the pilot came on and told us that since one of the de-icing trucks had broken down, we would be waiting one hour on the runway. Make that two hours. Two hours where Zoe sat patiently reading the magazine, the safety instructions, ate a pack of nuts, fed her dolls rice cakes and sat on my lap playing with the window pane. I was very impressed, only in the end did she start complaining but then we finally took off and she fell asleep leaning against me. She woke up well-rested after we touched down in Copenhagen and walked out herself waving "bye bye" to the flight attendants.

I have a brilliant flybaby but I am still worried about her traveling after she turns 2. She will have to sit in her own seat on take off and landing and so far I have not been able to convince her to do this when we have a free seat. I explain to her that she is a big girl and that she has to sit there but as soon as she gets a bit bored she wants to sit on my lap. I am seriously considering lying about her age since Scandinavian airline has yet to ask me to prove her age (opposite in the US where each airline I have traveled with were very adamant about seeing either a passport or birth certificate to make sure she was indeed under 2). But then again, she will not get miles for her flight. And that is the next big thing: getting her her own frequent flyer card.