Saturday, September 17, 2011

It's almost as if Alexandra sensed (and she probably did) that some other major change was coming her way.  She woke up crabby -- it probably didn't help that we were packing up our little apartment and all our belongings in it.  As excited as I was to finally be coming home with her, I have to say that the last few days in Moscow were pretty awesome.  Robin and I were a pretty good team both in terms of traveling together and in taking care of Alexandra, all the stress of the adoption was over, and it felt like a little vacation in Moscow.  So I was a little sad that it was all coming to an end...    But I digress.

So Alexandra was crabby.  It was raining.  We still decided to run down the street to our favorite little french coffeeshop, and have breakfast.  Alexandra refused to eat anything (stuff that she ate happily the day before), and screamed the ENTIRE time.  And when I say scream, I mean monster from Ghostbusters scream.  Like you'd expect green slime to start pouring from her mouth any second.  All the patrons vacated the room where we were sitting, politely mumbling that it was not the screaming child, but the chill in the air that made them move.

And off we went to the airport with Murat, Katie and her family.  Leaving Moscow for the last time for quite a while.....  Here is the juncture where I'll point out that traveling with a little toddler is quite an ordeal.  First, you have her in a stroller on top of all your other luggage.  Your "purse" is filled with various food items (most of which can crumble, squish or spill) that you hope she'll eat.  And it's hard to pay attention to everything.  Whole new ballgame.  Fortunately, neither the Aeroflot nor the passport control people were phased by the fact that I was traveling on a US passport and she was on a Russian one -- obviously they've seen families like ours before.  The border guard checked her adoption decree to make sure I had a right to take her out of the country, and we were ready to board our plane.

I will give this to the Russians.  People with small children immediately go to the front of all lines.  Again, it struck me from people who have no trouble cutting in line, physically pushing you out of the way if they need to -- but they all motion you to the front of the line with a "baby".  So we got to board early.  Mercifully, there was an empty seat between Robin and I, so Alexandra had a little bit of room to move around.

The flight was not fun.  She was tired, crabby, and upset -- when she'd finally fall asleep, as soon as she'd try to turn or move, she'd wake up b/c she just couldn't get comfortable.  She wouldn't eat anything.  The flight attendants would speak to her in Russian (and to us in English, so obviously, they'd seen many scenes like this before), and that would calm her down temporarily.  I was stressing on my own account b/c we had only one hour and 45 minutes until our connecting flight for St. Louis (the last flight out that night).  And I didn't have a boarding pass yet for that flight.  And it was JFK.  And I had to process my kid through US Immigration to become a US citizen.  So I had a bad feeling about making that connection.

Amusing incident -- one of the passengers got so drunk on the flight, that he fell down coming out of the bathroom, and passed out in the galley.  It was interesting to see -- Europeans are so quiet, that no one screamed, yelled -- it was handled very quietly.  I was wondering if there was maybe a medical emergency, but all the flight attendants were just giggling, like they've seen this before -- they offered the guy some coffee (which he didn't drink being that he was unconscious), then did what Russians clearly believes fixes everything in life  -- covered him up with several blankets, and let him sleep it off.    He was lying on the floor by the bulkhead, where normally the flight attendants sit during takeoff and landing.  The passengers on whose legspace he encroached upon were completely gracious about it.  The guy got woken up about an hour before landing.   Hmmm.

We landed right on time.  And at this juncture, may I just say that you should never hesitate to fly Aeroflot, should you have the choice.  I felt that they were comparable if not slightly better than US airlines both in terms of service, punctuality, food and onboard entertainment.

Robin and I bolted from the plane, and sprinted down to immigration -- where we explained our predicament to a TSA worker, and we got to the front of the line.  The US Embassy in Moscow prepared a stack of documents in a sealed envelope that I had to hand over to the immigration guy -- he processed Alexandra through, and at that point she became a US citizen (in addition to her Russian one).  Nevertheless, we had to go to an additional "secondary inspection" -- basically sit around for a little while for some more people to stamp stuff on her paperwork.  The clock was ticking, and at that point, we were getting down to an hour before my connecting flight.  But, my luggage was there, so we busted out to get the suitcase transferred to the St. Louis flight, which the Aeroflot employee at the transfer desk assured me it would.  At that point, we were running to take the train that runs between the terminals at JFK to get to the American Airlines Terminal -- mind you, we'd just gotten off of plane after 10 plus hours, and I was pushing an umbrella stroller with an exhausted little girl in it.  Rush up to the self service kiosk to get my boarding pass........  "the system is unable to process my request".  The AA employee told me that the flight was closed b/c it's less than an hour before departure.  I tell my sob story -- Russia, baby, no luggage.... PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE -- and he tells me to get into a rebooking line.  Long story short, I missed my flight, my luggage went somewhere without me, and there I was with a baby, no luggage and nowhere to go.  It was at that point that I was getting close to losing it a little bit.  And Robin stepped in and saved the day.  Apparently, by the time I got through all the lines etc. -- she talked to her husband's friend who lived in the Bronx, arranged with him for all of us to stay there -- in the process giving up a chance to spend to evening with her girlfriend in New York.  So we get in a cab for an hour.  It felt like we'd never left Moscow -- sitting in the back of car in a huge city, holding Alexandra on my lap, stuck in traffic for an hour.  ......

That's the end of the sad part -- Dan (Robin's friend) was super nice.  There was pack and play for Alexandra to sleep in, there was awesome pizza and cold beer, and a nice clean bed for us to sleep.

Welcome to America, Alexandra!