Teddy Bear Frozen in Carbonite

Speaking of bags, this teddy-bear backpack (spotted at SFO) appears to be inspired by Han Solo's suspended animation in "The Empire Strikes Back."

Got a Brand-New Bag

(Part of an occasional series on baby fashion. Click here for the complete list of posts on the topic.)

Elliot assigns great importance to his mom's purse and his dad's briefcase. He knows that packing up these bags is part of the ritual that adults carry out before leaving the house. So when Elliot wants to go to the playground, he will find Kelly's handbag or my briefcase and drag it across the floor toward the door.

When I try to leave the house without my briefcase, he gets upset and points to it frantically. It's hard to explain that I don't need it on the weekends. (He also might be disappointed to learn that my bag is mainly used to carry Snickers and crossword puzzles, rather than important documents.)



Despite Elliot's bag obsession, it never occurred to me to let him have one of his own. Thankfully, his aunt and uncle were kind enough to give him a backpack last week when we were on vacation. It's a Babar-themed bag that's the perfect size for him.



When Elliot received his bag, he was thrilled. It was clear to him that he had arrived as an important person. You would think he had just been inducted into the Illuminati.



He immediately put it on, bid everyone "bye-bye" and marched around the yard.



The next day, some of our family members decided to go hiking. When Elliot saw them preparing to leave, he jumped up and ran to get his backpack so that he could come too.

They left without him.

He just stood there with his backpack all ready, crestfallen. It was a sad sight.

Sorry, buddy. Having your own bag only gets you so far in life.

Awash in Luxury

Elliot loves his baths (if he were Iraqi he probably would have been a member of the Bathist party).

While on vacation, he got to take baths in a giant tub with lots of toys (pictured below). This compares with the cramped, mildewy tub in our apartment.



That made it hard to come home. The last day we were there, Elliot tried to take a morning bath (even after taking one the night before). You should have seen his face when I told him he couldn't take any more baths there.

Elliot has cried many times in his short life, but this is the first time I ever saw him openly weep.

Interesting Juxtaposition

When a judge overturned California's gay-marriage ban today, AOL placed the story next to one about Bristol Palin's engagement getting called off again.



Maybe both these things are good for the institution of marriage?

Texans Seize Justin Herman Plaza

I came back from vacation to discover that Texans had taken over Justin Herman Plaza near my office. (This is probably how the Mexicans felt in 1836.)



Apparently they're doing a tourism campaign called Texas on Tour where the state sets up attractions in other cities. There are Texas-themed photo booths, rides and what appears to be some kind of planetarium.

Vancouver did something similar in April, when they set up a zip line in the same plaza. So far, the zip line appears to be a much bigger hit than the Texas on Tour attractions (at least based on the attendance I saw when I was coming to and from work). The Old 97s will be playing a free concert on Thursday, so that will likely improve the turnout.

Since we're experiencing the coldest summer in 40 years, maybe Texas should take a different tack. A heat-humidity chamber, for instance? That way people could get a taste of what it's like in Houston. (It will be 96 degrees there tomorrow, according to the Weather Channel, versus a high of 58 degrees in S.F.)

What's odd about both the Texas and Vancouver attractions is they only manage to make San Francisco more fun. How does they make you want to go somewhere else?

If they were smart, they would make San Francisco less attractive by busing in belligerent homeless people and douche bags yapping on cell phones.

What a second, is someone already doing this??

Traveling Blues Part 2: The Worst Kind of Laptop

As I mentioned earlier, kids are allowed to fly free in your lap until they're 2 years old — a policy I feel deeply conflicted about. Children that age are just too big to fit comfortably on anyone's lap, and yet they're too young to understand how to be calm and quiet.

It's especially bad when your kid is a bit large. From his towhead to his toes, Elliot is longer than the width of two airplane seats.



We took four cross-country flights this month, and three of them were completely full. That meant Kelly, Elliot and I had to share a three-seat row with a fourth person. I felt especially bad for the passenger who paid to get upgraded to Economy Plus, only to find himself next to us. He probably should have demanded a refund.

Elliot was good at times, and he charmed some of his fellow passengers. But he also thrashed around, wailed, spilled food and drinks, and kicked the seat in front of him. We did our best to control and discipline him, but it's harder when you can't plop him down in his own seat.



We also had to deal with the skepticism of flight attendants. On our trip to Atlanta, one of them looked at Elliot, narrowed her eyes and said, "How old is he?" We assured her that he was under 2 (and in fact, you have to show a birth certificate during check-in). On our latest trip, a flight attendant said, "Oh, is he going in your lap?" When we said yes, she said, "Uh...okay."

Hey, we didn't make this policy, lady!

Elliot let off some steam by walking up and down the center aisle, but this created its own problems. He would break free and run off. At one point, he poked a woman in the bottom. She jerked her head around and looked to see who had done it. When she saw Elliot, she said, "Oh, well thank God it was a little person." (I guess that does beat the alternative.)

Near the end of our last flight, our seatmate remarked that Elliot was well behaved. (This was pretty generous since Elliot had cried and writhed around for much of the trip.) Within minutes, Elliot showed his gratitude by throwing a PB&J sandwich at the man and engaging his parents in a round of slap-fighting.

Fortunately, we have no more flights scheduled...maybe ever.

Traveling Blues Part 1: Escape From SFO

We had a great time in New England last week, but getting there was a nightmare. The trip from SFO to Boston was a 36-hour ordeal involving canceled flights, misdirected luggage and a desperate attempt to get a toddler to sleep on the bare floor of the airport (very hard to do).

Here's how it played out:
Friday night we arrived at SFO to take a redeye to Boston (already a risky proposition when you're traveling with an in-lap baby). As the cab pulled up to the airport, Kelly got an automated call saying the flight was canceled. We got inside and they told us the crew hadn't shown up, so we would have to take a flight the next day. As a bonus, the new flight would require a stopover of several hours in Los Angeles. Kelly tried to get them to put us on another airline, but United said they couldn't do this because she used miles to buy the tickets.

So we took another cab to get home. Elliot seemed a bit confused, since I had played up the idea of us taking a plane trip — only for us to take a round-trip taxi excursion instead. Fortunately, cabs are one of the many vehicles that Elliot gets excited to see (the list also includes helicopters, fire engines and cement trucks, but he never gets to ride in those).

We arrived the next day and were told that the new flight had been delayed four hours — just long enough so that we'd miss our connecting flight in Los Angeles (or at least, that's what the guy working at the United customer-service desk said). So this time, they agreed to put us on an American Airlines flight instead.

Fine. The problem was, this flight was also massively delayed. (It's worth noting that there were no weather issues in either San Francisco or Boston that I could discern.) It wasn't going to leave until 2:15 a.m. There was also the matter of our luggage, which was still checked to go on the United flight. To sort that out, we were told to go to the United gate, which required walking to a different terminal (flights to Los Angeles leave from the international terminal for some reason). When we got there, we found there was no one there. So we went back to American, which told us to go to United customer service.



They told us we had to go to baggage claim and make sure they didn't put our bags on the flight. So we headed out of security and went downstairs to the baggage customer-service person, who said it was already too late to retrieve our luggage — it was bound for Los Angeles. No one seemed too concerned about this, since the bags would get to Boston eventually. But since the flight would be too late to make the connection, the luggage wouldn't reach its final destination until much later. (And we were due to drive to Maine immediately after arriving in Boston.)

Also, isn't this a major security violation? I always thought it was a big no-no to check bags on a flight and then not accompany them yourself. In this case, we checked our bags and then flew a DIFFERENT AIRLINE.

All the while, Elliot is running around with glee — thrilled to be allowed up at this late hour. That made it a bit challenging to impart our dissatisfaction to the airline's personnel. It's hard to tell people they've ruined your family's vacation when a member of your party is behind you delightedly shrieking.

Anyway, we then talked to a different person at United who said that actually our bags would catch their connecting flight. That meant that we could make the flight too. Unfortunately, we'd missed it by about 15 minutes. Ugh.

So we were back to having to wait until after 2 a.m. We pretty quickly exploited all of the attractions of SFO. Did you know there's a "Kid Spot" with educational activities — most of which are in some state of disrepair. Elliot enjoyed playing in these large plastic tubes, which I think are supposed to teach children about wind currents or arteries or something.





An older child (whose parents had clearly lost their will to live) was launching himself off the top of the tubes and nearly collided with Elliot several times.

On the bright side, did you know that SFO has a Thiebaud in its art collection?



We had to force Elliot to go to sleep. We tried laying him down on the benches and then on the floor, but he would immediately hop to his feet and start running around again. Finally we had to strap him into his stroller. He was still restless and barely got any sleep.



When we did finally board, the saving grace of the flight was it wasn't full. That meant Elliot got his own seat, and he basically konked out immediately. And when we got to Boston, our bags were waiting for us (no one from TSA had destroyed them for being suspiciously abandoned). It's kind of sad when that's the highlight of the trip.