Flying with a 17 month old

This past week has been a lot of fun- crazy busy but fun! About two weeks ago I made a last minute decision to fly to Texas to surprise my sister (who's recently engaged) and meet the rest of my family who was in town on spring break. My sister was going to be wedding dress shopping with my mom on tuesday so it was the perfect time to come.
Monday I had my 30 week appointment (gasp) then K took Raleigh Grace and I to the airport to catch our flight to Texas!
She was a perfect angel (99.9% of the time) despite her refusing to nap and only sleeping 15 minutes in the car on the way to the airport.
This was our third flight (just RG and I) and all three times we have traveled without purchasing a seat for her- and all three times she has gotten a seat despite that. Every time we have flown we have also traveled with only carry on's. In the past RG was in her infant seat, clipped into the click and go stroller which made things a tad easier. Previously she wasn't walking. I was a nervous wreck that this trip she was just going to want to run up and down the isle the entire flight (which I'm sure she wanted to do but it wasn't too big of an issue). RG has been in her convertible car seat for weeks but for the purpose of this trip I wanted to see if we could fit her into her infant carrier just one more time- I had K measure her height and sure enough she was about an inch and a half shorter than the maximum height-- I knew she was fine in the weight department because the limit is 35lbs. In addition to her infant seat and stroller I had her diaper bag, my Vera weekender bag and my John Hart bag. I'm sure people probably thought I was a crazy bag lady haha!! I wish I had a picture! Security is always the worst part of flying... But we survived. I had to take my shoes and jacket off, empty my pockets, put our liquids in a container, take rg out of the seat, break down the stroller, put her seat, stroller and my three bags through the X-ray machine and then walk through with RG. Thankfully we didn't set anything off and they didn't need to search out bags. I set the stroller back up then clipped the car seat in and set RG in the seat. We gathered all of the belongings and went to Burger King and got two burgers and a large coke to go- at this point RG is wanting to get down and walk so I put the bags in the infant seat and put her doggie "backpack/leash" on her and let her walk beside the stroller- she actually wanted to help me push so that kept her close by ;).
When we got to the gate I immediately went up to the desk to see if they had two seats open that were next to each other because I had not purchased RG a seat and sure enough the man got our seats changed so that RG would have her own seat. We were so lucky that Raleigh Grace was able to get her own seat- I can't imagine her sitting in my lap the entire flight though we would have done it if we had to. :)
The man at the counter told me to go ahead and get in line to board (they hadn't started letting anyone go down to the plane yet but he gave us gate check tags for Raleigh Grace's stroller and carseat) and we went on our way. We made it down to the plane with of the gear in tow and then came the hard part- carrying all of my bags, our drink and rg and making it down those skinny isles without injuring anyone sitting in the idle (at this point several people have passed us up and gotten on the plane because it took us quite awhile to get down the jet way and get on the pane). Once on the plane RG walked in front of me but kept stopping- it's a good thing she is so cute because most people were too distracted by her to realize I was playing bumper cars getting down the isle. Of course we were 4 rows from the back of the plane but we finally got to our seat and got settled.
There was a lady sitting in the window seat who was eating dinner and didn't say much to us- I was nervous she was irritated we were sitting next to her but after the flight took off, Raleigh Grace was reading magazines in the seat pocket and trying to talk to her-eventually she acknowledged RG and was very nice.
We read tons of books, ate burgers, entertained the people around us (Raleigh Grace just loved talking their ears off and making adorable faces at them), read magazines from the seat pockets, read the plane menu about 100 times, read the emergency guide about 50 times, ate more snacks (I brought gold fish, yogurt bites, yogurt raisins, pouches, etc), tried to hold on to our seats during some super exciting turbulence (where mommy thought she was going to lose her dinner), colored in our coloring book, played with the seat belt- hooking and unhooking it 100 times trying to figure out how it worked, trying to look out the window (I was in a middle seat and she was in the isle seat), and climbed all over mommy and the seats.
When we finally landed (around 9:30 cst/ 10:30 our time) my back was killing me and I was soo tired!
The baggage people started unloading the bags from under the plane and RG was trying to watch/ talking to the lady beside us at the window seat- when RG reached to go to her. The lady seemed to like that and so I handed her over- next thing you know the lady is explaining everything that was going on to Raleigh Grace and she was taking it all in. The guys working saw RG looking out the window and started waving at her- then they motioned for other men working to come over and suddenly RG was the show of the night with all the baggage workers haha! As her stroller was coming out they would point and her and then at the stroller- it was too cute. Everyone loved Raleigh Grace as usual and we had a safe fun trip. I was relieved when it was over though and felt like I could finally breath again.
We were the last off the plane and my youngest sister (not the engaged one) and her friend met us outside of security. We grabbed some Starbucks and headed to the car where mom was waiting.
We headed to my grandmas house and totally surprised my sister-- she was on the phone with her fiancée when Raleigh Grace and I walked in and shouted "oh my gosh, I'm going to cry!" He was like "why, is everything okay!?" And she explained. (Apparently they had been talking about finances lol!) She was so excited that she did start crying! We hung out for a few hours and then we all went to bed! Such a long but fun day!! Just glad we survived ;)
Look for more updates on our trip coming soon (hopefully!) hehe. If nothing else I have a ton of pictures I can't wait to share!!