Little World Traveler / Home at Last

First of all, we're home. Whew. It's been a long trip back. Some of you might have been wondering how a 14-hour flight with a baby would go. We wondered too. Well, we couldn't have asked for more. Elaina Si-Yeon was wonderful. She was a happy little traveler virtually all the time. Even when tired, she settles right down after little to no fuss. The one thing she doesn't abide is her new mom being out of her sight if we're in a public place. Car seats aren't at the top of her list either, as we were to find out later.

A Happy, Easy-to-Please, Active Little Girl

We're still learning Elaina's personality, but so far, she's been a dream. She's mostly happy and very easy to please. She's funny too--she makes this little huff noise and kind of a trilling huff when she's happy. I've never heard anything quite like it. I wonder if her Korean foster dad taught her that--it seems like an male Asian noise to me, like the things you hear in Samurai movies (wrong culture, but...).We really couldn't ask for more. This trip would have been a nightmare with a cranky baby, but Elaina Si-Yeon has the sweetest disposition. She really made the trip bearable rather than worse.

Stranded in New York

We didn't have any trouble until we got to New York. After lots of hassle--changing terminals (which in New York JFK requires going outside, bundling up a little person and pushing a baggage cart through snow), waiting in multiple lines, etc., we were told our flight was canceled, and we had been rebooked for Saturday afternoon. So, we got a hotel (with help from Heidi's co-workers at the travel agency) and spent the night. Elaina was a happy little thing, playing on the bed, getting a chance to stretch her legs a bit. The three of us slept, more or less, for the first time since our journey began.

Escape from New York

As I write this, Heidi and Elaina and I are waiting at the gate, hoping our flight isn't canceled--many have been already, and ours has been delayed 30 minutes, but it is still, in theory, going to leave New York. We'll hopefully get to Philadelphia in time to connect to Boston (our rebooking sent us through Philadelphia instead of direct to Boston). I just hope we get out of New York. Then, I'll start hoping we get out of Philadelphia....


Hours later....

Hopes Dashed

Hoping to get out of New York is, as it turns out, not a very productive way to get out of New York. Our flight was canceled again (though no one thought to announce it), and I spent about three hours waiting in line and still had about a hundred people in front of me when it became painfully clear that we weren't getting on a flight out of New York Saturday night. With the winter storm coming Sunday afternoon and all the canceled flights from Friday and Saturday, it didn't seem likely we'd be doing anything Sunday but entertaining Elaina in an airport for the third straight day.

Uncle Chris Saves the Day

Elaina's Uncle Chris had been offering to drive down from New Hampshire to get us, and it had seemed like too great an imposition.... I never would have taken him up on that if traveling by myself, but with a baby into her 45th hour of travel, and a winter storm threatening to strand us days longer, I took Chris up on his offer. We had to leave our bags to fend for themselves. An agent said we wouldn't be able to pull them back out of the system, but they'd end up at our final destination. My experience with airlines and baggage has not been positive, and I think getting our bags back is going to be an incredible hassle, but we just couldn't continue to stand in line for hours tonight and again tomorrow just to roll the dice on getting out before the storm. We retreated back to the Fairfield Inn (a nice receptionist there held a room there for us based on an earlier "we might need to come back" phone call). We let Elaina play awhile while waiting for Chris to arrive and had our first meal since breakfast. We started for home at about midnight and arrived around 5am. Elaina slept quite a bit and was eager to stretch her legs after a fairly traumatic first experience with a car seat. (I don't believe she's ever been restrained away from her mother figure except during medical procedures--which include shots into the hemangioma on her face--so you can imagine how much she hated that car seat.) She's bounced right back, though, and seems at home here already.

First Contact

First contact between Elaina and the cats, Olyvia and Nadia, has been positive—excitement from Elaina and mostly disinterest from the cats. Maybe they're just so glad to see us that they've overlooked the "extra one" for the moment. Or maybe they don't realize that she's staying....