Keep your seatbelts securely fastened....

Sierra is into playing "travel" right now. She walks around announcing that she is in the terminal heading for the gate to board a plane. She of course has her "luggage" with her, which usually consists of a gift bag filled with random toys, and her gold sparkly purse. She also usually has a huge entourage of "her kids"--a vast array of stuffed animals and dolls that are travelling with her. Then she'll sit on the couch or something and she'll "talk to the passengers" (she holds up an imaginary mouthpiece and says things into it, like a flight attendant). She loves it even more when one of us says the little flight attendant shpeal. When she does it, though, it is a little window into what adult conversation must sound like to her. When she is imitating adult speak, she makes up random syllables and intersperses them with actual words. So her "announcements" over the "intercom" sound something like this: "Oom op basta mano we're going to take off now op om."

Then everyone has to click their seatbelts, and we have to come through the cabin with snacks and drinks, headsets for the movie, etc. The funniest part is that she refuses to ever land. This game will literally go on for hours. If you try to "land the plane" for something as mundane as having lunch or something like that, she absolutely has a conniption. This is even with an extensive explanation that we are going up the jetway so that we can have lunch at a restaurant in the terminal before we board our next flight, etc., etc. (This is slightly relieved when she is in "train mode" since then you can simply get up and walk to the dining car.) The nice thing was that the other day I told her I had to bring my paperwork onto the plane so that I could work on it during the flight. So all morning we were "on the plane" and I managed to go through all the mail and get a lot of the bills taken care of! She cracks me up.... Maybe tomorrow I'll try to take some knitting on the plane. Genius.

By the way, her travel itinerary so far has included plane trips to California, Phipps (our local conservatory and botanical gardens) and the playground. She went on the train with Grandpa to Chicago, and continuing out to the West Coast somewhere.