Home again home again

Jiggety jig.

Today is day 6 in Georgia.  We took a circuitous route home that involved spending 24 hours in Istanbul in order to arrive in Tbilisi at a reasonable hour (4:30 p.m. instead of 2:30 a.m.).

As long as this was going on ...

or this ...

... everything was relatively smooth.  However, whenever the iPods had to be put away, there was inevitably some of this ...

In any case, the extra time and cost to travel this way resulted in negligible jet lag.  Sold.  We will never not travel this way again.

We're here

The 10-hour Moscow-Washington flight was uneventful, except for the puking incident on the way to the airport, and the two diaper blow-outs on the plane (the latter, apparently, being the beginning of a stomach bug that hit us all pretty hard for our first few days in the States - awesome). We were prepared for both scenarios, though, so it wasn't disastrous.

Checking in at Domodedovo:

Fun on the flight:

In America!

The culture shock has included three trips to Target in four days (yay!), and the somewhat disheartening revelation that a show called "Storage Wars" is popular enough to merit a marathon on cable (what??).

December 3

Hello from jet lag hell.  It's the middle of the seventh night and I want to jump out the window.  When is this going to end?

This morning we roused the girls and decided to take a long walk after breakfast to get that natural light that is supposed to be so good for resetting our clocks.  Of course, Moscow winters are gray, gray, gray, and there was no sun to be seen today.  Instead, drab apartment blocks on the New Arbat.

Though our walk was brightened by Christmas lights, which, thankfully, Moscow does well.

We also ran into the beloved Russian cartoon character Cheburashka.  Having cut her teeth on Chuck E. Cheese during our trip to the U.S,, Natasha was intrigued by Cheburashka and kept running over to him, only to turn tail and run, horrified, if he took a step towards her.   

We took a stroll down the Stariy Arbat, where Natasha wanted to ride the Cafe Moo-Moo cow.  He's not very rideable, unfortunately.

We decided to get some sushi for lunch after Z passed out in the stroller (I guess there wasn't enough sun for her).  N enjoyed dipping the kappa maki into the soy sauce but not so much eating the actual roll.

Then we ran into a singing band of Hare Krishnas - a rare site for Moscow, to be sure.

We stopped at the Sedmoi Kontinent grocery store on our way home.  The girls have only recently discovered the candy in the check-out aisle.

Back home, they played on the balcony while Papa strung some Christmas lights - pictures of that to come.

Please go to sleep.  Please please please.

Jet lag update

Oh, sleep, how I miss you.

We're hating life here right now.  Yesterday I reverted back to plan A (get them out of bed and limit nap time), after plan B (let them sleep in and take a long nap) didn't work after plan A didn't work.  I don't think I'm being unrealistic.  I don't expect them to sleep through the night.  But I was figuring that, by night four (last night) after arrival, we'd see SOME improvement.

I was wrong.

Last night was the worst night so far.  I had mercilessly roused them at 9 a.m. They were allowed to nap for three hours (was that the problem?  Too long?  I don't know.) from 1 to 4 p.m. We kept them up until 9 p.m.  I went to sleep not long after.  I'm running on fumes here.

Natasha woke up crying at 12:30.  She cried, then Z cried, then she cried, then Z cried.  I spent an hour in there rocking them.  I did everything all the stupid websites tell you - didn't turn on the lights, didn't allow them to play, just rocked them and sang.  And still, SOMEONE was crying until 6 a.m.  And often, more than one someone.  And sometimes, that second (or third) someone was me.  Jeremy and I finally separated them, putting Z in the pack n play in our room, and we slept on the couch and floor in the living room. 

So these stupid websites, I don't know, maybe they are talking about jet lag over a two- or three-hour time difference, which, no offense, doesn't even count in my book.  Because just about everything I read cheerfully chirps that "night two will be the most difficult," or "by night four, things will start to improve," if they're not promising that your baby will sleep normally by then.

My.freaking.foot.

And now I'm faced with the dilemma.  Today do I go with plan A or plan B?  I'm thinking plan A, but at this point, my kids have only slept 6.5 of the last 12 hours.  Will they be overtired?  Will that cause me another night like last night?  Or will allowing them to sleep in just reinforce the wrong schedule?

Like I posted before, you'd think after five transatlantic legs over the last two years, that I'd know what to do.  But I don't have a solution.  Except to never fly.  Sorry, friends and family, I don't think we'll be leaving Georgia at all during our next tour.  See you in 2014 ...

Jet lag

Well, we're back in Moscow after a great vacation filled with family, food and shopping (stay tuned for a post about the expat phenomenon of panic buying).  But all good things must end, and, in their place, we have jet lag.

I've flown internationally with babies five times now.  And I have come to the conclusion that I am either incredibly dense, or that there is really not much you can do to get your kids over jet lag.  Each time, I have a plan.  Usually the initial plan involves waking the kids up somewhere close to their normal rising time.  And usually, it doesn't work.  No matter how much I engineer their schedule during the day, they still get up at 2 a.m. ready to play.  We expose them to sunlight (well, what sunlight there is in Moscow this time of year - not much).  We feed them at the traditional meal times.  We keep the room dark and discourage playing in the middle of the night.

Days later, still, 2 a.m. seems to be a good time for a party.  So then, around day three or four, I usually vary the plan.  I tell myself that "sleep begets sleep," or some such nonsense from the gospel of child-rearing experts. I stop waking them and let the, sleep as much as they like.

And, surprise, surprise, they still wake at 2 a.m.

Usually, after about a week, and just before I think I can't possibly take one more night of awful sleep, jet lag is over.  And it's not from anything I did or didn't do.

And I know that we're looking at about a week of terrible sleep, yet I still woke the girls up this morning (they had screamed more or less from 2:30 to 6 a.m.) at a relatively early hour.  They took good long naps at the appointed hour.  And I find myself hoping against hope that they'll sleep at least until 5 a.m. tomorrow.  Wish us luck.

A journey across the sea, by the numbers

We arrived in the U.S. six days ago, but I've only now summoned the energy to blog about it. 

Miles traveled: 5,200
Hours in flight: 13.
Hours in airports: 7.
Hours in transit to and from airports: 1.5
Hours slept by Z: 3
Minutes slept by N: 45
Minutes slept by M: 8
Minutes slept by J: 15
Diapers changed: 14
Cups of coffee drunk by M: 6
Toys packed in the carry-on: roughly 78
Varieties of snacks packed in the carry-on: 12
Future vacations canceled once we realized what the flights entail: 1
Last-minute decisions to carry-on a car seat: 1

Checking in at Domodedovo Airport in Moscow.

Somewhere between Moscow and Frankfurt.

Frankfurt Airport.

Contemplating the next 13 hours of travel.

Somewhere over the Atlantic.

We spent a large portion of our trans-Atlantic flight trying to get the girls to sleep.  That was largely a failure.  Predictably, the girls fell asleep once we hit the security line at Chicago O'Hare.  At that point, it was about 11 p.m. Moscow time - they had gotten up at 5 a.m.  And then we had to take them out 15 minutes later to go through the TSA check.  Which was fun for exactly nobody.

We learned that, no matter what you do to make a flight better, traveling that many miles with two toddlers is just never going to be easy.  Also, N's eczema flared up like I haven't seen in 18 months, whlie on the plane.  I don't know whether it was stress from lack of sleep, something in the air, or something gross on the seats and blankets, but it took three days of OTC cortisone cream (which we usually don't use) to ease her pain.  As a result, we decided to give up on the idea of going someplace warm for a week in February.  You have to fly at least 10 hours to get anywhere beachy from Moscow at that time of year, and it's just not worth the stress on her body.  Sob.  Goodbye, Sharm el Sheikh :(

Reason #9,567 why I hate United Airlines

The smog has gotten worse here in Moscow, so we've decided to move up my and Natasha's trip to the U.S. to await the arrival of #2.  We're headed out of here next week.  Unfortunately, the only direct flight from Moscow to Washington on an American carrier is a United flight. 

I loathe United Airlines.

I loathe them with the fervor of 500-some burning forest fires.  Their flight attendants are, hands down, the rudest I have ever encountered.  My luggage almost never gets to where it needs to go (like that one awesome time when my bags, coming from Armenia, somehow ended up in Manchester, England, instead of in DC).  When I call their customer service line to find out whether they've located my bags, I get an automated message saying that my request is being processed - only to find out days later, after actually getting a real person on the line, that there is actually no record of my request.  Plus, after all that crappy service, they have the nerve charge for everything but toilet paper.  (And I wouldn't be all that surprised if, on my next flight, there were a Russian port-a-potty money collector outside the WC door, handing out tiny squares of generic single-ply at 15 rubles a pop.) 

So when we started out trying to get seat assignments on this particular United flight, I wasn't that optimistic.

We wanted bulkhead seats so that we could get a bassinet for Natasha.  Our travel office called United and was told by an agent (let's call him "Agent A") that the bulkhead seats were reserved for Economy Plus passengers.  Did we want to pay the extra money for the upgrade?  At that point, no, we did not want to pay extra money just so that we could sit in the only place on the plane that could house the baby bassinet.  It was the principle of the thing.  (And don't even get me started on the sham that is Economy Plus).

A little later ...

OK, principles, schminciples.  We called United to upgrade to Economy Plus and attempt to reserve bulkhead seats.  No dice.  Agent B told us that the bulkhead on our flight was actually an exit row, so babies and enormously pregnant women could not be seated there.

Being fully aware of the lack of consistency among United booking agents, we called back.  Agent C, speaking from a call center somewhere in India, informed us that the bulkhead row (and let's not forget that it's an exit row) was actually reserved for disabled passengers only.  Jeremy argued that his wife would not exactly be fully able-bodied, given the huge belly and the squirmy infant.  Agent C said, "Oh, she's pregnant?  No problem.  And no, you don't have to upgrade to Economy Plus to get the seats."  So now we have seats on the bulkhead and a reserved bassinet.  I know, having flown United way too many times in the past, that the likelihood of us actually retaining those seats and getting the promised bassinet are probably only about 50 percent.  But we like Agent C.  Even if she works for an evil, evil airline.