Planes, planes and...blowouts

I have a problem when I'm coming home from Serbia. I would would call it a habit now that I've been there four times in 19 months and the same thing happens every time.

First of all, it takes me 10-14 days to get on Serbia time. They're 7 hours ahead of us so I tend to be up at 2:00 in the morning which is 7:00 pm at home so I can visit with Dean and the kids on Skype.

About the time I get my inner clock figured out, it's time to come home.

I usually take the 6:00 a.m. flight out because it gets me home mid afternoon, so by the time we get home from the airport and wind down a little bit, it's time for a full-night sleep.

The only problem is, I can NEVER sleep the night before we fly home! Ugh, this is so frustrating because I know I need to sleep and it's going to be a very long trip, but my mind just won't shut down. This trip was no different. I finally forced myself to bed around 12:30 a.m. and needed to wake up at 3:00 a.m. I woke up Asher at 3:30 so I could give him a big breakfast and allow time for the..umm..fallout that would result.

I spent the four days from when I busted Asher out of the orphanage until we went home trying to constipate him. He has some pretty nasty GI stuff going on (oh, how I cannot wait to get those stool samples tested!) and I just knew there were going to be problems on the trip home. We went through a fair amount of bananas and rice cereal last week! LOL

So I woke up Asher at 3:30 a.m. and gave him some cereal w/bananas and a bottle (as in baby bottle) of water, then finished zipping up all the suitcases, stripping the bed, etc. 10 minutes before our ride arrived the blowouts began. Asher went through three diapers in those 10 minutes. THREE DIAPERS!!!! I prayed that was all the poop he had in him, and since he ALWAYS has a blowout within 30-45 minutes after eating, I wondered if it was possible to make the entire trip without feeding him? I was half serious.

I got the last of our bags down to the front door just as my friend Zoran arrived.

My other worry about the trip was the fact I did not have a stroller and Asher is a brand new walker with legs the size of a 2 year old. (actually, he wears a size 3t perfectly!) Since the Belgrade airport is very small it would be a good indicator what the rest of the trip would be like! We got all the bags loaded on one of those cart thingies, and I was able to push it with one hand while holding Asher's hand with the other. Thankfully Asher LOVES holding a hand (demands it, actually) so this part was pretty easy. He stood nicely while I got the bags checked in, and he LOVED walking through the airport as we went to our gate. So far so good!

Have I mentioned the Serbia airport is very small? They don't have jetways to the planes, instead you have to walk down 22 flights 4 flights of stairs, then outside on the tarmac to where the plane is sitting. It's December. Picture us:  I'm wearing my backpack and carrying Asher in one arm and the diaper bag. Pretty sure each of them weighed about the same! I tried to carry as few things as possible with me, but they were all heavy things like my laptop, the iPad, "the red book" (adoption documents) then the diaper bag was all Asher necessities. It was all heavy. So we're walking to the plane, and you have to walk up the steps...the very steep steps...into the plane. We get seated and Asher was pretty curious about everything around us. He was happy the entire 1 hr 45 minute flight as long as he had the tail of his seat belt to play with. We made the flight without incident.

Coming soon, the flight from hell transatlantic flight.