Well, we made it to the US. But not without a little excitement since international travel can’t be done without a little excitement. Asher was a trooper through the whole experience. It was his first time to travel to the US, and he really did great. Leon and I were relieved because we were kind of dreading our flights because we didn’t know how Asher would do with little to know sleep on a really long flight.
The trip didn’t start off very well. I thought it would be a brilliant idea to feed Asher breakfast in the car since we had such an early start. But that backfired when he ended up getting car sick about an hour or so away from the airport. Certainly our trip had to get better from there.
We didn’t book a seat for Asher, so we paid for him to fly in our laps. We had prayed, though that a seat would be free for him to sit in his car seat. Not only did we get a seat for Asher, but we also got bulk head seats with the entire middle row to ourselves! It was brilliant because Asher could crawl around on the floor and play with a little extra room. It was a lot of fun for him, and he even took a little nap on our flight to Philadelphia.
When we arrived in Philadelphia, we headed to our gate (after a stop for food to get my Chick-fil-A fix) for our flight to Chicago… only to find out that our flight had been delayed 3 hours. We were a bit disappointed, but that’s international travel for you. We knew there would be some delay somewhere.
So we hung out in the airport and tried to get Asher to sleep. I spent a lot of time walking up and down the airport concourse with Asher in a back carrier hoping he would fall asleep, getting a lot of looks of sympathy. That was because Asher was crying pretty inconsolably by this point. Eventually, I gave up on getting him to sleep in the airport… mostly for the sake of those around us. :)
At last, they let us board the plane. Once again, our prayers were answered when there were plenty of open seats so Asher got his own seat again! And then we sat at the gate. And sat. And sat. Finally we were told that the pilots were trying to fix the air conditioning on the plane. And then they told us at 7:30 pm that our take-off time was delayed until 9:00 pm. They were apparently having a lot of inclement weather in Chicago, causing many things to be delayed at O’Hare. Another flight to O’Hare got cancelled. Leon and I were honestly beginning to wonder if we were going to have to get a hotel room in Philly and try again the next day. We finally pushed back from the gate at 8:30, and we were on our way.
We arrived in Chicago, and were met by some friends because they were letting us borrow their car. Our trip wasn’t over just yet. We still had to drive to Leon’s parents home 3 hours away. Thankfully, Asher fell asleep in the car. Unfortunately the storms that were causing all kinds of delays at O’Hare hadn’t calmed yet. We ended up following one down the interstate almost the entire way. So much for sleeping in the car… At least they kept Leon awake since he was driving, and Asher slept right through it all.
When we pulled into the driveway at Leon’s parents house, it was 1:15 in the morning. Twenty-six hours later and completely knackered, we finally arrived at our destination.
We quickly put Asher to bed and settled ourselves in to go to sleep. Unfortunately, Asher did better coping with the jet lag than I did! I had myself convinced that he was going to wake up in the middle of the night that I didn’t sleep. I also remember waking up feeling like I slept for hours, only to realise it was still dark and it was 3:30 am. We didn’t hear a peep from Asher until I had to wake him up for breakfast! Amazing. I think this child has coped with the jet lag better than his Mummy!
So now that we’re here and all mostly recovered from jet lag, it’s time to hit the ground running with this whole home assignment thing!
