Minnicks On Their Road To Ever After: We’re Home Bound!

Or so we thought…

Usually flying home is the worst (and it was) but it was also exciting knowing we “accomplished” Italy WITH a baby and had so much fun and made so many memories!

I knew after all the traveling we had done that flying home would be a piece of cake.

I’m sure this doesn’t come as a surprise to anyone but Lola slept a total of 45 minutes on the 8 hour plane ride (shoot me) even after 2 doses of Benadryl…. AND she only wanted Aunt Taytay for pretty much the whole ride home.

Bless poor Aunt Taytay!

We landed in JFK and alll parted ways! It was so hard ot say goodbye to everyone but watching Tara walk away and hearing my baby girl cry and cry knowing how sad she was and there wasn’t a thing i could do to make it better was the absolute worst!

Tara had a flight directly to Atlanta and then Savannah and we had a flight to Charlotte and then Atlanta (go figure)!

We had a few hours to wait so we ate AMERICAN food (how did i not take a picture of my cheeseburger?) and then Lola was WOUND up! For Italy time, it was her bedtime but she bright eyed and READY to go!

Our flight got delayed and delayed and delayed some more and it was honestly the worst part of the trip! We JUST wanted to be home! Eventually we got on the lane and THANK GOD as soon as we sat down, Lola passed out! We then continued to sit on the runway for over an hour waiting to take off…. i thought that was the worst part…. NO such luck.. it was only the beginning!

All I kept thinking was “oh well, at least Loa is happy and asleep, we can do this! Well as soon as we landed in Charlotte she woke up and al hell broke loose, she was tired, cranky and crying!

It was 11pm and we were then notified that although our ATL flight had been delayed it was now cancelled due to weather! We asked for help with a hotel and there was no such thing as “help”… Alex and I (raised hell and then) ran to the ground transportation to find a avalable shuttle to ANY hotel!

They were all booked, like all of them! Two hours later (with a screaming tired, miserable child) we found a hotel 30 minutes away from the airport and rode in a taxi at 2am with no car seat down the interstate to get to it.

Talk about one pissed off mama.

I was tired, frustrated, feeling like a failure mama who has a tired baby and o where for her to rest her head. She had done so good the whole trip and I just felt i was being so ufair to her to simply not provide a spot for her to sleep. Now putting her life at risk by not having a car seat for her to ride in a strange town down the interstate. In bg huge alligator tears I told Alex “If Lola can’t be in a buckle, I refuse to be in a buckle up”! He eventually taked me into buckling up promising me i would be able to hold on to her better if i was buckled….

We finally arrived and I literally raced to the room and put her to bed, we had no luggage, nothing to wear and we were disgusting, sick and exhausted.

The next morning i still wasn’t sure if she would be okay since she had lacked so much sleep… I woke up to this:

I was still very mad about the situatoin but when your child is happy it literally feels like 1000 tons of bricks has been lifted off of you. Thank goodness for a place to sleep, a very expensive, short lived place to sleep.

Oh yes, and a free breakfast! Possibly the only good thing out of this lay over!

We found a taxi WITH a carseat and made our way back to the dreaded airport in our same clothes to try this again…

Again our flight was delayed. Shoot me now.

So we waited and waited some more and if i never see an airport again it will be too soon.

FINALLY we made it HOME! Lola naturally cried most of the way home until about two miles away from the house an she crashed…. isn’t that what every baby does?

I couldn’t believe it we were home at last! I tried to wake Lola up and feed her dinner to get her back on schedule but with the first cry I changed my mind! She had been a trooper for almost two weeks if he was tired and I have a crib to put her in, by God I’m letting that baby sleep!

She ended up sleeping from about 5pm until 8 the next morning!

She was happy as could be after getting some good sleep I however, was starting to feel terrible and getting increasingly worried about being able to take care of Lola without getting her sick! BUT I was SO happy to have TIME to get us settled back in at home without worrying about rushing back to work!

SO what’s the first thing I did? Called Gigi to the rescue of course!

Can ya tell she missed us? We had to fill her and Poppy in on all of our adventures and Lola needed a new friend to “cling” to!

Daddy was such a trooper about getting right back at it and going to work the very next morning so after a few days of Lola nad I catching up on our sleep we met daddy for a lunch date!

It cures pretty much everything! Well that and Mexican food! Oh how we had missed Mexican food! ..and how Gig missed that sweet sugar!

We had much more sunshine and “whatever Lola wants Lola gets kind of day” since she had been on everyone else’s schedule in Italy! I was SO glad to have down time with her and do stuff she wanted to do!

Since we have been back her new favorite thing is pushing the stroller that she has had for moths but was never interested in it, now she love and and thinks it is “so cool” to tae places! Daddy came straight from work to meet us at the park! She is getting so good at the slide! She can actually do it all by herself now!

That night we gave Gigi and Poppy all their souvenirs and Lola wore her new Italy shirt to bed, it was pretty much the cutest thing i have ever seen on her!

On Gigi’s last day I bribed her into going with me to take the girl to her 15 month check up (since Lo went and turned 15 months our first day in Switzerand) –

It was terrible, not as terrible as her 2 month but still terrible, very terrible!

Lola has a new “always looks mischievous” face that i just LOVE!

Then it was finally OUR turn!!!!

Well, our turn to weight another hour in the doctors office which is super fun when trying to entertain a one year old!

“Don’t touch that…or that… or that!” Sweetness! Final word: We’re healthy and growing, 25% for height and weight, Lola needs to talk more and we are “exceptional” on all motor and cognitive skills!