Not even a three-hour flight delay could keep one 10-month-old baby girl from spreading some joy to her fellow passengers.
Desiree Stearns, 33, says she was surprised when her daughter, now 11-month-old Julianna, was not only unfazed after their July flight from Chicago, Illinois to Orlando, Florida, was delayed for over three hours — she also happily greeted every single passenger on the plane when they were finally allowed to board.
“All of a sudden, out of nowhere, she just started saying ‘hi’ to people,” Stearns tells TODAY.com. “I wasn’t even recording at first, but she just kept doing it so I took my phone out.”
The Florida mom says her daughter said hello to “literally everyone who walked by,” adding that most of the passengers would “stop and say hi” back.
“Pretty much everyone did,” she adds. “I think there were 300 or so people on that plane. It was full.”
The proud mom posted a video of baby girl Julianna saying hello to the passengers on TikTok. To date, it has been viewed more than 4 million times and has been liked over 840,000 times.
“I ultimately took that video just because I thought it was so cute,” Stearns says, adding that she had no idea it was going to go viral.
Now that it has, Stearns and her husband refer to their baby girl as their “Little Star.”
“It made (me and my husband) feel good as parents, you know? We’re so lucky and blessed, especially after a horrible flight — and our flight to Chicago was awful as well,” the proud mom says, sharing that she had flown to Chicago with her husband, daughter and mom to visit extended family.
“She was just such a trooper,” Stearns says of her daughter. “That video was just for me and her, you know what I mean? I’m just glad to catch it on film.”
At 11 months, Stearns says her daughter has “the biggest personality” and is often smiling and laughing, adding that Julianna had just learned how to say “hi” — after learning the word “dada,” of course.
“We’ve gotten so lucky,” she says. “Being first time parents you hear the craziest things, which kind of scares you of course. But she is so fun, she’s a great sleeper and she loves food.”
It turns out, baby girl Julianna is also a great traveler — something Stearns says her husband initially worried about.
“I thought: ‘Are we getting divorced after this trip?’ Because seriously that trip was very stressful,” Stearns says. “It’s one thing when you’re traveling with just your husband and your kids, but when you have multiple people with multiple opinions and then people have anxiety, you’re like: ‘Are we gonna make it through this trip?'”
Thankfully, on only the second flight of her young life, Stearns says her baby girl was nothing but laid back — and, clearly, very welcoming to her fellow passengers.
“She takes after her mom: Just pay attention to her and give her food,” Stearns says, laughing. “That’s literally all she cares about.”
