"Amazing Airplanes" and A Happy Layover

En route to New York City yesterday, my daughter, two grandsons and I were happily delayed two extra days at my mom's lovely home in Indiana, where we've been visiting and spending lots of happy hours on her back porch - rocking on her new rocker from Cracker Barrel and listening to the rain and crickets and cicadas.

It seems there was a crazy Air Traffic Control computer malfunction in the DC area, and ours was one of thousands of flights in the East Coast area that was cancelled or postponed. (see NPR report)

We were lucky to have gotten a text notification before we left for the airport. Eighty minutes on hold with Southwest was a piece of cake compared to being stranded in an airport or grounded for hours on a runway!

Tomorrow, we'll head to the airport for the second leg of our journey across the friendly skies where my daughter and her boys will meet up with her husband for their newest adventure:  Seminary!

Hopefully there will be no further delays, and we'll be up in the air again reading some fun plane stories to my two-and-a-half year old grandson.  It can be so challenging travelling with little ones - most airlines no longer provide food, or tours of the cockpit and meet and greets with the pilot.

But my daughter is prepared with healthy snacks, and my grandson has his own little backpack full of fun activities...
-Books (of course) - Richard Scarry (lots of detail)

and plane stories, "The Little Airplane" by Lois Lenski, and "Amazing Airplanes" by Tony Mitton and Ant Parker.

-Small size toys - two little planes and a dino.
-Travel Magna Doodle (no mess!)

-Lollipops - (Organic YumEarth) for take-off and landing to help those little ears pop!

'Bye for now.  Be back soon!
What do you bring for your little one?

Fountains, and Lessons of Kindness

Learning kindness...Madeline and the Bad Hat by Ludwig Bemelmans.  One day the Spanish Ambassador and his family move in next to Miss Clavel and the 12 little girls in her care ("the smallest one was Madeline"). It is soon discovered that Pepito, the ambassador's son is a "bad hat." He continually causes mischief and gets into trouble, and Madeline wants nothing to do with him! Only when Miss Clavel and her charges come to the rescue of Pepito does he agree to change his ways - and Madeline decides to befriend him. (Pepito is also a main character in the stories Madeline in London and Madeline and the Gypsies.)  Warning: Pepito is cruel to animals.  Best for children who won't be overly troubled by his cruel tricks and who are old enough understand this cruelty becomes a lesson for Pepito as he eventually suffers from his own actions. As with all books, parents should preview.

A sheep, a fountain, and a kind family...The Sheep of The Lal Bagh by David Mark, with illustrations by Lionel Kalish.  Go here for my past post and review of this fun book.

An Oz Fountain...

The "Forbidden Fountain" was created by Baum in his sixth Oz book, The Emerald City of Oz, in which an enchanted fountain purges the memories of all who drink its Water of Oblivion. In that book, the fountain provides the resolution of the plot conflict, through which the invading hordes of a barbarian army are defeated without violence. The fountain appears in later Oz books by Baum and his followers; it is significant in Baum's The Magic of Oz, Rachel Cosgrove Payes's The Wicked Witch of Oz, Edward Einhorn's Paradox in Oz, and Eloise Jarvis and Lauren Lynn McGraw's The Forbidden Fountain.