I'll be honest, I may have panicked a little. (A lot). I haven't ever flown on my own with her before, and the prospect (on Easyjet) wasn't particularly inviting.
I decided that the way to cope was by making sure she had plenty of things to entertain her on the plane...after all, we are going to be in the air for all of 90 minutes, so heaven forbid she should be bored.
So, rather than turning to the sticker book shelf at the Works (other budget sticker suppliers are available), I for some reason decided to search "free paper doll printables" on Pinterest, and get a bit over-excited by what I found. Cue totally unnecessary Pinterest overdrive...but miraculously no true Pinterest fails!
There's a lot out there. All done for you so you don't need any artistic abilities. Just a printer, scissors, and perhaps some double-sided sticky tape. And some card. And some glue. And duplo bricks. Oh, and a craft knife.
The three year old will therefore be flying with...
Frozen mix and match duplo (made using free Frozen printable from Red Ted Art - here: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/272397477438897694/ and the idea from here: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/272397477438901369/). To be fair she found this in the bag and played with it until I took it off her...it may have a longer shelf life than the flight.
My little pony paper jigsaw (printable from here: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/272397477438897668/). Pretty but that's a lot of very tiny cutting out. Including applying a tiny bit of double sided tape to each piece so she can stick them together on the plane without a pritt stick...(it was during this cutting out that I decided on the title of this post).
And what I was originally looking for - printable paper dolls - these from here: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/272397477438897702/ but there are loads out there. Again, a lot of cutting, plus a bit of sticking to put the dolls onto card, but no double sided tape this time.
As it turns out, the husband is flying with us after all, my panic has subsided somewhat, and I now realise that I have totally over-prepared for a very short flight, and have started to develop scissor blisters after two solid evenings of cutting out tiny things. This would never have happened before Pinterest...my total absence of artistic ability would have killed all of the ideas way before the cutting stage.
On a plus side, we're holidaying with my mother and sisters who will all, I suspect, enjoying reliving our childhood holidays (with less canvas and less rain) by playing with and designing outfits for the dress up dolls, so hopefully the effort won't be entirely wasted. Bring on the flight!
