The last time Powergirl and I few with L, the baby was six months old and still perfectly content with plopping on our laps for hours at a time. Now, however, the kid is one, and she’s just about as squirmy as a seal out of water.

Naturally, then, we grownups are somewhat wary of taking her as a “lapchild” on Monday’s 5.5-hour plane flight from San Francisco to Lihue, Kauai.

How will the baby fare? How antsy will she become? How will we be able to deal?

We’re not too worried about a total meltdown; though L has trouble sitting still from time to time, she isn’t big on shrieking (which is good, because neither one of us has any patience for screaming kids on airplanes).

Instead, I’d say, we’re mostly concerned about our ability to keep L busy. We’ll bring some toys, but we can’t bring too many of them since space in United’s Economy Plus section is limited. We also have to be judicious about the toys we bring; we can’t bring toys that make too much noise, out of respect for our other passengers.

I’ve run some numbers and have determined that we really will only have three hours of flight to occupy her. My math: One hour total of eating + 1.5 hours of sleeping = 2.5 hours of busy time.

Still, three hours is lots of time. And there’s only so much aisle walking I can do. For those of you parents who’ve done this before, what’s the secret? Any recommendations/suggestions will be greatly appreciated.