Monday, November 28, 2011

En route to Europe with 3 year old in tow

Whoa, time flies.....when you forget to blog...

In January My Avalon and I went on our European Adventure to visit my brother and meet his new family.  Prior to leaving I had a lot of shocked and horrified reactions to travelling so far alone with a 3 year old.  I brushed them all off. 'I am a traveller', I would say to myself, 'and she is an adventurous child.  This is no problem at all'.

Well,  the reality was somewhere in between.  It was a lot harder then I had ever imagined, a lot harder.  My first instinct was to warn everyone against it and to never travel again.  In the end it was worth every agonising moment.  Let me tell you all about it!

As we boarded our flight from Toronto to Amsterdam I had every expectation that Avalon would sleep.  I mean, it was an overnight flight....and she sleeps at night.  So the logic behind that was solid.  Not the case.  1 hour before landing in Amsterdam she fell asleep after hours of the Mommy-Child fight cycle.  We landed at 7am in Amsterdam which was 1am in Toronto - at this point she had been awake for 19 hours.



The Amsterdam Airport is big.  No, it is HUGE.  MASSIVE.
This is a simple math equation:
Huge airport + sleep deprived 3 year old + standby connection + basket case Mommy =  tears.
Fortunately the tears belonged to me because Avalon is a rock star and breezed through the whole experience as if it was a grocery trip on a Wednesday morning.

A bathroom break, quick coffee and about 13kms later we found our connection gate to finish our journey to Luxembourg City.  I will save you the explanation on how horrible boarding a transfer bus and a fokker was with way too much carry on and a tired 3 year old (for the childless a tired 3 year old moves like molasses) .  I'll just leave it at horrible and that we clearly annoyed several fancy pants business men.  No big deal, at this point I would be grounded in less then 1 hour and have my baby niece in my arms.  The excitement was intoxicating!

Meeting my baby niece for the first time was simply awesome. She is so beautiful and well mannered.  Just typing this brings me to tears since I can't drive over to give her a kiss.  Avalon was enamored with her the moment she met her....altho I have to be honest and say that as soon as Avalon met Chloe (my brothers Chihuahua) the baby had to share the spot light.




At the end of our journey to my brothers living room it was 12 noon in Luxembourg, 6am Toronto time.  Avalon had been awake for 24 hours.  Remember how I said she is a rockstar?  Ya, total rockstar because at this point she was completely composed which is truly amazing since I was having trouble standing.  By the time I had her tucked away that evening she had been awake and moving for 32 hours with no major melt downs.  Shock and awe, shock and awe.

I'll wrap this update here and come back soon to fill in the contents of our time in Europe and of course the journey home.  Taa for now!

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