Latest happenings

I didn't sleep at ALL on Thursday night, I was waaaaay too excited to come home, and nervous as well. Good thing I didn't sleep because the stupid hotel didn't give us a wake up call, suprise suprise. More on that in a future post. So we left for the airport at 3:30am and got someone to help with our bags. They tried to get us to give them a bazillion dollars, okay like $50, but of course we barely had any tenge so we gave them like $8! Totally worth it. We finally are allowed to check in and we wait forever while something is happening at the counter. While we are waiting the kid behind us, about 18 months old, choked on a candy he had and the Dad had to give him the heimlich and he proceeded to throw up the candy, and breakfast, right next to us but luckily not on us.



So we are at the BMI counter, oh lovely BMI, and the %^$@! behind the counter says that Aidai won't be allowed on the flight. Well, it got quite ugly at that point and I not so kindly informed her that Aidai would be on the flight, I was going home and so was Aidai and that I would stand in front of her until I got on a flight with my baby regardless of how long it took and made it clear I would stay for DAYS if I needed to. I wasn't going back to that hotel. Her reason was she said the travel agent always messes up that out of all the travel agencies in the USA they always do it wrong, yeah right lady, noone that I know has ever had a problem with them and they do alot of adoption travel. She said that it was a BA booking and they couldn't open it in their system to get the boarding pass because they are BMI blah blah blah and didn't indicate that she was going to make any attempt to fix it. In fact, she told me only the travel agent could fix it. So after raising my voice and starting to cry she decides to get pissy at me because I'm not waiting and being patient, because she's trying to fix it. Well if you had told me you were going to help in the first place I wouldn't have been pissed!



So we finally get past that hurdle and onto the flight with no issues. Aidai cried about the seatbelt but we got another passenger to explain in Russian that she needed to wear it and that might have helped a bit but then she decided it was completely okay once she saw it in the safety brochure in the seat back pocket. She was fine on take off, no ear issues or fear. She thinks turbulence and rough landings are fun. I hit a wall and fell asleep and my mom played with her for about an hour and then Aidai slept for a few hours. I'm actually not real clear on how all the time passed but somehow it did.



So we get to London and get off the plane and go through all the hurdles and have to go to the BA counter because BMI couldn't give her the boarding pass in Almaty, whatever. So we go to customer service and are waiting for the guy to do whatever he has to do and some flight was late from Barcelona so this big pissed off tour group who were headed to DC missed their connections and they were all crowded around behind us and just had no regard for a 3 ft tall child! So he hands us our boarding passes and we aren't sitting together and I told him we all HAD to be together cause if either of us is out of Aidai's flight she screams. I told him we booked it a long time ago and paid alot of money and that it didn't make sense we weren't together and he said "well you should have checked in online" and I said "well we were in Kyrg and Kaz and the internet isn't great and we have paper tickets not e-tickets so I wasn't sure how to do that". So he tells me " the internet is everywhere, it's your problem" and I informed him that evidently he needed to travel outside of London because the internet is NOT everywhere. So of course the tears start again and we are standing at passport control and the lady from BA there asks if there is anything they can do because I am at this point telling my mom that the guy is a jerk and that I am going to write to BA and how can they do this. So we tell her the situation and her and the guy next to her get on the phone and fix it for us, just like that! She looked at Aidai, saw that she was little and overwhelmed, heard that she had only been with us less than 2 weeks and made it all better. They have a row on the flight for unaccompanied minors and there weren't any on the flight so we got that row. It was the 2nd to last row and it was freaking perfect cause we were together!



Aidai stayed up the entire layover. We walked around alot and looked at nothing and we also ate.



I watched two movies on the flight, I FINALLY saw the Sex and The City Movie!! It came out the day we flew to Kyrg on trip one so I never saw it. Aidai crashed and wouldn't even wake up to eat. I tried to wake her up with about 45min left so that we could get her into cuter clothes and so she could go to the bathroom but she just wouldn't wake up. She just cried and cired. Not like screaming banshee cry, more like quiet sobs. We think she was 1/2 asleep and didn't know where she was and wasn't waking up to figure it out so she was just dead weight and crying for abour 20 minutes but I don't think she bothered anyone cause she was so quiet about it. She was just sooooo tired. So finally seeing the new clothes worked and she woke up and we put the clothes on her right there in the seat and then she was happy and giggling at the bouncy landing.



We were waaaay in the back and she had to go to the bathroom so we were the last off the flight. We finally got off and then stopped in the airport cause my mom and I had to use the bathroom. Then we went through the fist immigration checkpoint. That only took a few minutes and the officer was very sweet. He handed us off to another one who took us downstairs and hand delivered our paperwork to a woman in another office. It took a few minutes there for paperwork. Everyone from our flight was pretty much gone by that point. We got our bags, that god they have the little smart carte things. We got to customs and Iw as crying cause we were home and about to see everyone and I was just so damn happy. So the guy waived us through pretty quickly after telling us his friends just adopted from Guatemala and congratulations and everything. I had no idea how far we had to go but we turned a corner and there were double glass doors and then everything just became a blur or tears! I don't know who I hugged first, I think Bill and then maybe my friend Kelly, not sure! Aidai took right to Bill and Josh. She knew them so well from looking at the pictures ALL the time. Her Oma and Papi were there as well as our friends from near and far.

We headed home and she didn't hate the carseat as much as I feared she would. She liked that she could see out. She's very wary of the dogs but is getting better everyday. We got home and none of us went to bed until sometime around midnight. We awoke thew next morning and headed to Pumpkinfest and Janet and Tom's marvelous wedding! Aidai loved the balloon animal making JP. The Keene Sentinel newspaper covered the wedding and Aidai's photo was in the paper! I am planning to scan in the article and picture at some point for everyone to see. It was wonderful to see our dear friend tie the knot amongst 22, 000+ pumpkins! Aidai did very well walking around the festival and the crowds didn't seem to bother her one bit.

Sunday we took our first trip to the playground and realized once we got there that we had forgotten the camera! Oh well. Next time we'll try to get some shots of her on the slide. We had a great lunch with Janet and Tom today. Aidai ate alot of spaghetti after first rejecting it. She's been rejecting alot of food and also hasn't been going to bed easily. In Kyrg and Kaz she napped and slept great but so far not here. There are more worries about missing the fun I think.

I'll try to upload some pictures soon!

Elizabeth