We made it to Moscow! We literally went straight from the airport to the baby house.

He was not happy to see us. I can’t blame him. We are strangers, so of course he doesn’t want to leave his nice caregiver to go with us.

But, we went outside. Our facilitator grabbed a little push tricycle for him.  He was okay with that… we pushed him around for a bit, took him out and more tears. I distracted him… this boy loves kisses, raspberries and eskimo kisses. You can tell he doesn’t quite no what to make of it, yet, so he leans in for another one.

We started to get some more tears, so I sat down on a swing with him, and just gently rocked back and forth. He made himself comfortable. And barely moved for 20 minutes. I sang to him and he just cuddled up. I am not sure if he ever actually fell asleep, but definitely close to it.

He was starting to slip off my lap a bit so I moved him. He didn’t mind.

He laid like that, until Aaron got closer to him, then he sat up, alert. He does not know what to think of Aaron. He has probably not been around too many men, especially not ones who want to play with him.  So, I put A down after a few minutes, and we walked around. He can walk independently, but is still a bit unsteady, so he prefers to hold a hand. He did not want to hold Aaron’s hand, but later reconsidered…

We spent the rest of our visit walking around and playing with the gravel, which he tried to eat.

Excited to go visit him tomorrow! Hopefully he will feel a bit more comfortable with us for the entire visit.

Today was terrible. We got to KC with an hour and a half before our flight… with only 3 United agents helping ALL of the customers. 1 of them for economy, 1 who had no clue what she was doing (“I’ve only been doing this 3 days and I don’t know what I’m doing!”), and 1 for First Class, Business, etc.

I could go into details, but I doubt that anyone really cares…

I will admit fault to say that we should have been there 2 hours early. (Which was totally my fault, laughing at Aaron, who wanted to leave at 8am, which would have gotten us there 2.5hrs before our flight). I’ve flown out of KC many times (including internationally), and taken other people to fly out of KC many times, and we’ve always found an hour to be PLENTY of time. So an  hour and a half seemed very safe.

But, there was so much wrong with the situation. Poor logistics, understaffed, undertrained staff, staff who just didn’t care, and overbooked flights. Anyone, even just walking by, could see that the whole thing was a disaster.

We heard a whole lot of blame on us… I can’t tell you how many times that they told us that we should have been there 2 hours early and the statement “I can’t do anything”. Never once did we hear an apology or any sympathy to our situation.

There are two things that a customer service rep should be decent at… 1.) Whatever it is they serve you doing. 2.) Being nice to people. I saw neither today.

Anyways, we have tickets for tomorrow. Same airline. We will arrive at the airport 3 hours early. In the very likely event that we will have way too much time, I will stand exit of the customer service counters and hand out hugs and encouraging notes like “Better luck next time!” or “Fly Southwest!”

P.S. In case you are wondering how bad it is that we are arriving in EE a day late, we will see. Please pray it’s not a big deal.

We will be boarding a plane in 11 hours! Yeah! We won’t see A until Sunday, so middle of the night for all of you Americans.

Anyways, can you please be praying for us?

Also, let me know if you need the blog password, as all posts abroad will be password protected until he’s home with us. The password will be the same that it has been since November. 🙂 If you emailed me about the password and I never got back to you, please email me again.