holiday surprises

Lil one was crying. It was 7 o'clock at night, and who could blame her, really?

Maybe it was waiting in the car with P as I, completely frazzled and hopeless, was manoeuvring the over sized giant WalMart in hope of diapers and formula and wipes and baby food, only to be brought to a complete stop repeatedly: "Pardon me, sir (aren't I ever the polite kind?, running on no sleep and mucho jetlag), but I don't see any carts". "Oh, well, the store is full, you know." (A giantissimo wal-mart? full?) "Mmh... baskets then". "We don't do baskets". I guess not. moving on. Only to be confused and frustrated by the assinine layout of the store).

Or maybe it had started all earlier, much earlier, at 4:30 in the morning (french time, make time 10:30pm the previous day), when we had tenderly awoken her for a quick change and a hop into the taxi.

The day was eventful: the airline had not registered her on the first flight. Why, I do not know as we had the ticket in hand. Why it mattered, I know even less, as she was sitting on my lap and did not require a seat of her own.

The second flight tested our resilience. Our cushiony B class seat, meant to rejuvenate the one not currently on lil-one-duty, was given away in front of our very own eyes in exchange for a very sizable wad of cash (which was not registered into the system but pocketed by the manager), after which we were informed that they thought we were a no-show. There was no B seat for us. P was fu-rious: they were not compensating us in any way, as they blamed it on the other airline. HELLO?!?? How is this our fault? can you spell airline co-chairs? Arg. Aaaooommmhhh -think yoga, unity, self-preservation.
Not only that, but they did not give us the bassinet we'd requested. Worst of all: they didn't give it to anyone. It sat there, unused, for the 10+ hours we were on that airplane, daunting us.

Returning to the little one: she was an angel: played with the little boy occupying the seat behind her, trying to climb her way over the top of our seats to go bearhug him. dutifully falling asleep after only about 30 back and forth pacings in the coach cabin. , but also always waking up on time to check every single movie, sitcom and commercial displayed on the few tv's in the cabin. flipping through or teething her way through every toy we'd packed so that none would be jealous. she even thought the flight would be a great time to demand that she and she only be allowed to hold the spoon to feed herself (i usually use multiple spoons to win at that game, but she would not eat from any I was proposing), so we quickly reverted back to milk.

and then we landed. you know the drill. crowd stampede to exit the airplane. cattle lines to pass through immigration. fake smiles. near comatose wait in front of the baggage carousels. 1,2,3 bags. wait in front of the oversize bags for car seat. wait, wait, wait.

3 (three, iii, trois!) hours after we landed, i left the lost luggage line. i had no car seat. i had not filled a claim form as that would have required another hour and a half wait. the kind lady in front of me thought I should jump the whole line (A was in bjorn, I was obviously beyond worn out), so I politely (no good) asked the guy in front of her, would he mind if i quickly handed my lost luggage form and address.
"Yes, I do mind." (I was going to write, "as only overly-assertive Americans do", but that's not kind. And I don't know if that's even true.)

There went my hope with humanity. System problems and obstacles and mess-ups, I could handle. But such a personal, contempt-filled remark, did it. I left the line, defeated. And tried to contain myself long enough to make it through the basics of Walmart.

But then, after 22 hours of travel, she didn't sleep that night nor the following one.