We woke him up at 4 a.m. on Thurs, 7-21 and took a taxi to the Vilnius airport. Then we had a 2 hour flight to Frankfurt.
This was Ben's first time on a plane, and he was not scared at all! When we first boarded the plane, he kept making a gagging sound. We were thinking, "How can he be motion sick when we haven't even gotten in the air yet?" After about a half hour of him gagging (and probably making the people ahead a bit nervous), we finally told him a firm "Nah" (no in Lithuanian) and that was the end of that.
Then we had a 5 hour lay over at the Frankfurt airport. Ben did amazing here too. We took many walks- he loved the moving sidewalks! He tried eating a frankfurter (we had to have one when you are at the Frankfurt airport, right?) but did not like it. He watched lots of Rescue Heroes on my phone.
Then at 1:00, it was time to board the flight for Chicago. The unfortunate thing here was that because we had to switch our return tickets at the last minute, we could not get 3 seats together. So Andrew and Ben got to sit in Economy Plus which meant more room and quieter. Poor mom was all alone in Economy at the very back of the plane. Of course, Andrew had to care for Ben for a 8 hour flight so I think he deserved the extra leg room and quiet. Ben did very good on this flight even though he only slept about 15 minutes for the entire trip. Andrew said he watched movies or just sat and looked around. What a trooper!
We landed in Chicago at 3:30 central time, but to us it felt like 9 p.m. which meant we had now been awake for about 16 hours with only a few snoozes here and there.
And we were totally not prepared for the international custom process with the added element of bringing a new citizen into the country! Oh my goodness, as I mentioned in my previous post, we were brought to about 5 different areas where different parts of our paperwork had to be processed and approved. Fortunately, we had asked for the airline to provide us a stroller since we knew Ben would not able to walk for a long distance after all that travel. The airline didn't have a stroller but instead provided us with a wheelchair and escort. Ben rode proud like a king thru all our stops- just taking everything in. He never once lost it and had a meltdown- very impressive. Especially considering again, the lack of sleep.
Finally, after 5 minutes in our car, he fell asleep. He woke up briefly to meet his sisters when we came into the house but then was pretty much down for the count until his brother Jonah woke him up in the morning. I couldn't have been more amazed about how he handled everything. I was very proud of that little boy. He sure knows how to roll with it!
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