He goes down the first night at 7:30pm and sleeps straight through. Yeah baby!! THAT'S what I'm talking about!! The next day we start off well, until Mommy changes his diaper on the bed. It's a king size bed and he was in the middle of it... well for a minute anyway. I stepped away for ONE SECOND to throw the diaper away and hear the loudest CRACK I've ever heard. There he is... feet still on the bed, head on the floor doing that shuddery little inhale before the big scream. Big scream ensues, he's alright. Great big, giant goose-egg already popping up over his right eye.
GREAT!! I've been a pediatric nurse for 20 years and I can't keep my own kid from falling off the bed? I've not even had custody of him for twenty four hours yet!! I suck.
The next night is not so good. He is awake and crying most of the night. This is a different cry. It won't be consoled. He'll hold onto to me, he'll let me rock him, but he just can't stop. It's 3:30 in the morning and we're both crying now. I know how scared and lost he must feel. He finally goes down about 4:15 and our ride to the airport is coming at 5:15... just perfect.
We crawl to the airport, get checked through and realize that somewhere between the hotel and the gate, the stroller has gone to heaven. How bad can it be? He only weighs twenty pounds, right? We board the flight to find ourselves back in airline He@@.
It's the "better" airline (Aeroflot), but an old, old plane. Once again, I have my knees smashed into the kidneys of the man in front of me, and when my husband drops his tray it ends up in his liver. What fun!! Jack is doing well, though. He's laughing, he's smiling, he's waving to the passengers behind us. Not bad for 45 minutes sleep!
It's a four hour flight and like any good Mommy, I've packed provisions for my precious young son. We have a bottle on takeoff and snacks for later. We had breakfast in the terminal just prior to boarding. Perfect. I'm all over this Mommy thing. Miracle of miracles, the plane takes off on time. I reset my watch to Moscow time and settle in.....
We start to descend, I feel my ears pop and offer Jack something to drink. He's happy, we play for a while. Hmmm.... uhhhh, why can't I see the ground anymore? No, seriously, where did the ground go? Why are we back up in the sky?
The flight attendant rattles off some long thing, then does a spectacularly bad job of it in English. From what I can gather there is bad weather at SVO2, so we are landing at another airport... SVO1 perhaps? That doesn't make sense though... they're not that far apart. We ask the flight attendant a question, they make a "circling" gesture with their hands... okay, we're just circling the airport, it's all good.
One hour later, we finally land... YAY!! This flight has been as hot and malodorous as the first. Apparently it doesn't matter whether you travel in July or September, it's hot and it smells. They have the heat cranked up so high it's actually burning my right leg against the body of the plane. I'm cranky, Jack is starting to not be quite as cheerful and DH is ready to die.
We land, get poor Jack suited up in his winter wear and wait to deplane. Uhhh, why aren't we pulling up to the terminal? They make another announcement... apparently we're re-fueling. WHAT?? We don't have enough gas to drive to the frigging terminal? We sit for another 45 minutes, sweating and hungry. Finally, I call my interpeter and tell her what I think is going on, but can she PLEASE talk to someone and get a straight answer?
I get back on the phone with her, and what she tells me has me absolutely floored.....
Nooooo....you can't leave us hanging.....!!!!
ReplyDeleteOh, I almost forgot about that :0)
ReplyDeleteIt feels like yesterday!