Someone suggested it earlier, and I'd been wondering about it anyway, so here it is, a Daddy Types travel category. I'm going back to pull all the travel-related topics into it, including advice and gear for being away from home, and discussions of car, train, and (of course) plane travel. Apologies for doing this only at the end of the summer vacation season, but come on, is your infant in school? And how much vacation are you actually getting anyway?
And here's one tip that really worked to our favor on the cross-country leg of our flight back from Japan. There was a family of three boys--ages 6, 3, and 1 or so--raising hell in first class the whole way home. The parents could barely lift a finger to them. [Turns out they'd been to Disneyland and the Four Seasons in San Diego, so I'm sure they were burned out, but still...]
Meanwhile, the flight attendant complimented the kid for being so well-behaved, even though she'd just screamed bloody murder over my wife's sunglasses.
The moral of this story: You're being graded on a curve. For a successful flight, your kid doesn't actually have to be quiet; he just has to be quieter than the other kids on the plane.
Greg, what was the problem with the sunglasses?
[the kid wanted to play with them; they're tiny, fragile little wire-no-frame ones, so when she couldn't, have them, she freaked out. -g]