Flying with H-babe and tips for traveling with yours

As most of you know, W and I took a little trip to Vegas the end of February and of course we brought along little Haidan babe. At the time he was 9.5months and starting to cut his two top teeth. Fun right? Actually, YES it was great fun!
I have some tips and things to keeps mind when you fly with a baby... As if I'm an expert... I'm not, but this is my experience!
We used W's aeroplan points to buy my ticket so the flight times were super weird. I was also going to fly alone. Neither are ideal but we booked a flight that was during when H would sleep. We left Ottawa at 1pm (he was asleep) and got into Newark during dinner, our ne t flight was at 6 and we got into Vegas at 9pm their time. H slept during both flights for at least an hour, and when we arrived in Vegas he was asleep and had so much fun flying that he stayed asleep all the way to the condo and through the night! Hurray! I didn't bring my suitcase (w brought it the next day on his flight for free) so in my carry on I needed to have the essentials.

In my backpack:
Tooth brush
Contacts case with juice in it already (and eye drops just incase)
Glasses in my makeup case
Tank and undies for me for the next day
One change of clothes for H
10 diapers and a half full pack of wipes
Change pad (diapers, wipes, change pad all fit into a little bag I had so it was easy to take to the planes potty)
One stuffie, Sophie, and teething rings to play with
iPad with entertaining games
Cell phone (on airplane mode so that I didn't get charged roaming)
Passports and letter from W saying I could travel with H alone... Yes I needed it
Wallet with $30 American
6 squeezer food things for H-babe (I ate one when I felt sick and hungry and he was sleeping)

Clearly the bare essentials. It worked and worked WELL! I was impressed by how easy the flight was. I couldn't tell you the tricks to keeping a baby happy because quite honestly, I have no idea how I did it. I offered the boob at any flinch of a fuss, which maybe helped? Haidan is a super social, happy most of the time, easy to please kinda baby anyways so I was very very lucky. The worst thing that happened was he had a poop blow out on our second flight. I waited too long to change him because there was a line up at the bathrooms... Lesson learned! 

One of the most important things I would encourage any traveling for the first time parent: keep calm and stay happy. I was smiling and calm and forced myself to just laugh and talk to people (because I was alone and needed conversation) and knew that it could be worse! I also was positive in my thinking "We are lucky enough to go on a trip, I am fortunate enough to have travel experience already, I am social anyways and not afraid to ask for help, I have a happy baby, I am a confident parent (I'm not, but I tell myself I am so that I will be haha ), I CAN do this!!,"