It's 2 a.m. Do You Know Where Your Daughter Is?

Yes, as a matter of fact, I do. She's in my bed sleeping soundly. The only problem is that she should be in HER bed sleeping soundly. I don't know if her little blow-up mattress is too hard or what, but she woke up about 1:30 crying. I held her for a bit until she went back to sleep and put her back in her bed. She slept just long enough for me to get back to sleep and then woke up crying again. So I went against all the rules (safely, of course) and put her in bed with me. And now it seems that I've been kicked out. That's okay...I'd rather have myself a little sleep deprived than her. I'm just glad she doesn't seem to be affected by jet lag!! So I guess now is as good a time as any to give details of our trip.

Like I said earlier, I couldn't have asked for a better flight!! She played most of the way from Denver to Mineapolis. The lady next to me fell in love with her and played with her some of the time. And if the cabin pressure changes bothered her, she never showed it. We landed in Mineapolis at about 5pm and our next flight was supposed to leave at 7pm. Evidently there was a miscommunication between the ground crew doing maintanence on the plane and the flight crew, because the flight crew ARRIVED at 7pm!! I guess the ground crew finished early and failed to tell the flight crew.... At any rate, Adri was just a tad tired by then. We spent our layover getting her changed into her PJ's in the bathroom (and forgetting to take her diaper bag off the back of the stroller before I took her out. It pulled the stroller over backwards, dumping my pop all over the bathroom floor. No one helped...just stared. Thanks guys....). By this time, between the humidity and the effects of some medication that I've been on (my life has been one big hot flash for the last month), I was DRENCHED with sweat. I managed to get everything back on the stroller and back out to the now overflowing waiting area. A nice (and kind of boisterous) lady came over and sat beside me and started asking about Adri. She is an American married to a British citizen, and was going home after a wedding. She showed me pictures of her 4 month old twin girls and her two year old daughter. She said if I needed any help on the flight just to ask. Her breath seemed to have a distinct alcohol odor, so I just kinda smiled and nodded. She did, however, suggest that I see if I could be assigned a bulk head seat so that we would have more room since Adri was a lap ticket. When I went up to inquire, I found out that the seat next to me was empty--score!!! So we just kept our original assignment and went back to sit down. By this time they had begun boarding first class and a number of other passengers. WHAT THE HECK HAPPENED TO PREBOARDING THOSE WHO NEED ASSISTANCE?!?!?! Evidently they don't do that anymore--or at least Northwest doesn't. But at one point the flight attendant made a very quiet announcement that if you needed extra time or assistance you could board too. So I looked at this lady and said, "I've never done this before. Do I just get in line?" She grabbed me by the hand and said, "Come with me, dearie. I'll get you up there" and proceeded to announce to the entire airport that I had a baby and needed to get through to the front of the line. I was apologizing to them as fast as she could clear them out of the way! The other thing that surprised me was that NO ONE helped me on board!!! Not any staff, anyway. When and older British lady (very proper, I might add) commented that it was barbaric of them not to help me on with my bags and such, a nice young man in a Dr Pepper shirt turned and said, "I'll take your bags for you. Just tell me where you're sitting." So I dropped the stroller at the gate and followed him into the plane where he set down his bags and lifted mine (which were pretty heavy) into the overhead bin. I never saw any of them again to thank them, so thank you so much tipsy 30-something lady and Dr Pepper guy!! You saved my life!!!

By the time the plane actually took off, Adri was fast asleep on my lap. She slept right through take-off!! I even laid her down on a pillow on the empty seat next to me, and she never woke up until about three hours into the flight. At that point she sat on my lap and played for about thirty minutes until a nice old British man (whose beard looked a lot like Daddy's) came over and, after talking my ear off about his whirlwind trip through the US National Parks, he offered to get my bag down for me so I could get her a bottle. She drank her bottle dry and went back to sleep until about an hour before we landed. And even then I had to wake her so that I could feed her before we got on the ground!! We landed about an hour later than scheduled, and it took me about 45 minutes to get through immigration, baggage, and customs. I was SO glad I didn't have any problems!!! And I found Russ right away too. Russ (who works for the Essex County Police force) is Kim's friend who graciously picked me up from the airport for little more than the cost of gas money and a jar of American peanut butter. Evidently British peanut butter is pretty bad. So about an hour later we arrived at Kim's flat in Westcliff-on-sea. You can see the ocean from her bedroom window!!!!! Russ got all of our luggage up and even played with Adri for a while so I could call my family and Ben (who was in DC at the time) to let them know that I had arrived safely. Then he showed me where everything was, showed me how to work the tea kettle (oh how I wish I could take one back with me!!!) and got me a glass of water before he went home. I then fixed Adri a bottle and we promptly fell asleep on Kim's bed for about two hours until she came home from work. We chatted for a couple of hours, headed out to Tesco (it's like a cross between Walmart and Target...and Geico...evidently you can purchase just about anything from Tesco if you know where to look!!) to get a few things, picked up some Indian food on the way home and came back and crashed.

And so now I'm back at where I started...my daughter still in my bed sleeping soundly. I think I'll just sleep on the couch :-)

Cheers, mates!

posted by Brandi at 7:33 PM