Question: What do you do to keep a toddler entertained on a plane?

ANSWER: Whatever it takes. 

EXHIBIT A: Mum's face covered in stickers, complete with glow stick mustache.

Sixteen people on Teagan's last lap child flight on September 30th. Sixteen people. What a way to end our two year run of free flights. And a good run it's been. We've flown to and from Canada three times, Idaho twice, Seattle and San Francisco once. And out of those 20 or so flights (we had layovers on some flights and I'm too proud not to count them individually) Teagan cried for 20 minutes on one - waking up completely disoriented after sleeping for 3 hours. That didn't stop me from panicking for weeks before every. single. flight. Because weeks and months went by between them, she seemed a different child every time which sent me into a tizzy, printing colouring pages of whatever she was into at that particular time, hoarding stickers and glowsticks and packing her body weight in Goldfish, veggie straws and fruit snacks.
My in-laws were kind enough to lend us a portable DVD player and essentially save my life. Once we were able to use electronics, she was good as gold and just got better when the flights attendants came around with drinks and snacks.

It was the 15 minutes on either end of the flights when electronics have to be shut off that nearly gave me a heart attack every time. The take off and landing never seemed to bother her - when she was a baby it lulled her to sleep. The only problems we had were other babies around us - she's an empathetic crier. If someone's upset, she's upset for them. Sometimes there's nothing you can do, but when we could, we sat by ourselves so her heart didn't break for her peers. That and when she woke up from a deep sleep, she seemed to be in no man's land - not quite asleep, but not quite awake. This was on our way home from Toronto, in the wee hours of the morning and the people around us were surprisingly kind. I apologized profusely, but they all said that she was so well-behaved for the rest and that babies cry. The flight attendants actually asked a kindly lady sitting in the window seat if she wouldn't mind sitting in an aisle seat across the way so we could have a row to ourselves - seriously awesome. I've heard horror stories from friends dealing with less-than-friendly flight attendants and sitting next to cranky curmudgeons and thank goodness we haven't been seated next to many of those. One gentleman sat next to us on a Southwest flight when she was about 9 months old. We boarded with Family Boarding and he boarded in the first wave of the B group - this detail is important, because Southwest allows you to choose your own seat and he happened to choose the seat next to us despite the fact that the plane was essentially empty when he boarded. He had the nerve to ask me if she'd flown before and whether she was going to cry. She had and she didn't. I was happy to make him eat his words.
On several of the last few flights we've taken, we've been fortunate enough to have an extra seat for Teagan. Funnily enough, it hasn't been when I've flown alone with her. <sigh> She's not a small thing, and trying to keep her contained on my lap without encroaching on our neighbour's space was nigh impossible. On the way to Toronto (apparently this particular trip was fraught with difficulty) I was still wrestling Teagan at 1:00 in the morning, trying to find a comfortable position for her to sleep and glanced over at an Australian couple on the other side of the aisle with their toddler laid out across both of their laps, absolutely zonked. I confess, I was envious. She fell asleep eventually...and so did my arms.
While I'm not looking forward to shelling out the money for Teagan to have her own seat, but the personal space will be nice. The parental version of personal space, anyway. The parameters are a little different.