Trans-Atlantic Journey, Party of 3!

Midnight on New Year's Eve comes and goes as my little clan pays little attention to the need for champagne or toasts, and we get our gear ready for our morning trip to America.  I was basically giddy about the whole prospect of getting away from the dim, gloomy weather that is Finland for, say, the longest winter you can imagine.  I wasn't planning on bringing any clothes since I had enough waiting for me in the US, and baby gear was also not something I had to worry about, as Aleksi's stash of baby stuff I had purchased over the last months and that was waiting for us could drown an elephant.  Breastfeeding is awesome in the way that I don't have to worry about what he'll need--a boob pretty much always does the trick.  The bad thing about not living next door to an airport is that you have to stick your kiddo in a car seat to get from home to airport and both Aleksi and I usually end up in tears over this constraining arrangement.  I much prefer wearing my chunky little man like a very oversized accessory.  So anyway, we catch some Zzzzz's, wake up ready to roll, and the in-laws (love them) cheerfully pick us up in their SUV and take us to the RR station, where we embark upon our 3 hour task of getting to the airport in Helsinki.  The good news is that despite getting sleep all night, Aleksi was ready for a long nap, apparently, when we put him in the carseat and got moving, because he was out like a light.  On the train, also, he didn't seem to mind the journey.  Whew.  But I did NOT know what to expect for an 8 and a half hour plane ride!  Smack in the middle of Aleksi's most awake-and-interested-in-not-staying-in-one-place time, no less.  But anyway, as terribly cold temperatures quickly ushered us into getting ourselves off the train in Helsinki, onto a bus heading for the airport, and off the bus heading straight for the Finnair gates, we were unknowingly headed for trouble.  

We get to passport control only to have a very unintelligible & tense conversation ensue between Matti and the Finnish passport-control-man (don't know if that's his official title or whatever, but it'll do).  I stand there dumbly holding Aleksi and wondering what's going on, and not liking the look on my husband's face that basically means that all is not running smoothly.  Finally, they go into a room off to the side, but not before Matti quickly explains that his passport is a bit problematic because of a loose page that Matti had reinforced on one corner with some clear scotch tape.  Seems awfully picky to me, but I suppose security is pretty tight at airports these days, especially when it comes to obviously non-threatening traveling families with babies.  So they end up deciding that there isn't time to issue a temporary passport and his current passport is probably unacceptable, but they'll let us all board the plane to New York anyways.  The hitch is that they warn us that Matti may be turned away in New York, and he'll have to turn around and board the next flight to Finland, heartlessly taken from his wife and infant.  We decide to take a gamble and go for it.  Let me tell you that was a LONG flight in terms of emotional energy used up fretting and worrying about that.  I tried to stay calm and just focus on keeping Aleksi fed and happy (which was surprisingly easy, I just kept him in my lap or wrapped around me the whole time).  Matti, on the other hand, was not taking it too well.  But at the same time was taking it really well.  He kept looking at me and at Aleksi and getting all teary and overwhelmed by how much he loves his little family and how much he does not want to be separated from us for that amount of time, ever.  In a way, it was really theraputic for Matti to be able to take some time to really fully grasp the enormity of his appreciation for his family, persuaded to do so, of course, by incredible fear that we were about to be unfairly torn apart for a long while.  

Anyway, the fears were unnecessary because the passport-control-guy just smiled at Aleksi when he swiped Matti's passport through the little scanner machine, and didn't even look at it.  It pays to have an adorable baby to show off just when you want to distract someone!  The three of us walked through to the baggage claim so giddy and happy (well, ok, the baby wasn't experiencing the same relief, but he seemed happy too), like a weight of a zillion pounds was lifted off our shoulders.  We greeted my good friend, Jen, walking on air with enough hugs for her to knock her over.  We cruised towards her awaiting vehicle and I basked in the loveliness that was that unpleasant leg of the journey being finished.  We had to deal with Aleksi deciding that he had had enough of being on the move about halfway between JFK and Jen's place in Stamford, Connecticut, and proceeded to scream bloody murder.  I crawled from the front passenger seat to the backseat at the first safe place to stop the car, and used a tip I got from my favorite online discussion board, and attempted to nurse Aleksi in the carseat!  Here's the shocking part--I don't even have 2 feet long breasts and it worked!  My back got sore from the strange position I was contorted into to make my baby content, but he was out like a light after a brief session of nursing, and the 4 of us in the car were much happier for it.

Back at Jen and her parents' lovely home, we rejoiced in the opportunity to finally take it easy after a somewhat stressful trip.  I bathed with Aleksi, which he liked until I tried to use children's shampoo (not baby shampoo) which burned his eyes, which cut our soak short a bit.  We all dined happily, and I even stayed awake until around 10pm watching part of a movie with our lovely host family, until my eyes started shutting.  I crashed with my men in bed, and Aleksi didn't seem to know why we weren't getting up at our normal time around 4 am, when it would have been late morning in Finland.  I walked him around the house until he settled down for his 'afternoon' nap which meant I got to sleep until breakfast.  The funny thing is, since Aleksi and I keep such an off-schedule at home, going to bed after midnight and getting up at noon, Aleksi was acting like a normal baby with his sleeping habits, and all it took was for us to jump 7 time zones west!  

The next day after breakfast we figured why not head into the city?  Ok, I admit it, I figured that why not head into the city so I can get a knock-off-designer Coach bag and wallet, and convince everyone else it would be a good idea for other reasons?  Not that Jen needs convincing to hit the Chinatown bargains of Canal street--she's always a good partner-in-crime on that score, but I certainly didn't reveal this motivation to my husband who would have surely & boringly pointed out that I have enough bags.  As if that's the point.  We have enough cute diapers, too, but does that make me want more any less??  Unfortunatly, no, it's a madness that only bizarre-shopping-obsessed women can possibly understand.  

Anyway, I headed into the city with my husband wearing Aleksi, great friend Jen, and myself all banded together like a cool-young-twentysomethings-plus-a-baby type of team.  Aleksi fell right asleep in the comfy arrangement he was riding in, before we even took the train into Manhattan.  The weather was perfect for the cruising around the city, well above freezing, with crisp, cool air.  We hit a deli for my much-long-anticipated meal of onion bagel + lox + cream cheese, and it was everything I dreamed it could be.  We shopped around in an electronics store (for Matti's purposes) and then head to Canal st. (for my sinister purse purposes).  Jen and I basked in the selection of all sorts of darling totes, and I finally, after much hesitation, settled on the purse of my dreams + wallet, both in a darling black Coach print, and Jen went in on the purchase (you can bargain harder with multiple items) with a nice big handbag for work.  Matti was surprisingly calm and patient during this little side-venture, although Aleksi woke up at this time and decided he didn't particularly like Chinatown.  We ducked into the closest spot available for nursing him, which happened to be a Burger King, and I laughed at myself trying to breastfeed Aleksi in a Burger King after the recent headlines about a woman being asked to leave.  However, Aleksi was much less interested in eating as he was in looking around, so we bundled him back up, this time against mommy, and head back out into the crowds.  

We decided it would be prudent to try to take the opportunity we found, walking past Banana Republic, to try to spruce up my husband's image.  The poor man has been walking around in the same eurotrash clothes for far too long and I was determined to help him.  However, the place was exceedingly picked over and full, not to mention Matti has a hard to fit size--needing small waist and long length (31 x 33 is not easy to find).  So we had minimal success on the clothes-acquiring front but much success on the feed-the-baby front.  I managed to shop and breastfeed simultaneously, and Aleksi approved very much of the arrangement, getting to peer around at the busy surroundings while eating.  The only problem is that Aleksi doesn't care too much for my overactive let-downs.  He tends to bob off the breast during that crucial moment of insanely powerful jet-spray, and happily shower in the stream, or else let the stream hit passers-by and whatever else happens to be to my left or right.  It can be embarassing for me, but it's always a wet situation where afterwards all I want is a bath and a dry shirt.  But we somehow made it through.

Anyway, getting past our day in the city, we had a lovely quick stop in NYC and kept going to visit my mom, the Grandma anxious to meet her new grandchild, in TN.  The flight was uneventful and fast.  Do NOT like those tiny little planes, though.  They give me the creeps, like they aren't really capable of keeping us all up there, know what I mean?  But my mother made it all worthwhile with her beaming self waiting for us at the airport, happily squeezing Aleksi's fat little leg sticking out of the wrapping he was in, and had slept in on the flight.  We ended up staying at her home, while she bunked over at her boyfriend's.  It was wonderful to get some rest and then wake up to a nice country mornin' breakfast at Cracker Barrell, where I think I shocked more than a few rednecks with my public-breastfeeding (actually walking around the dining area while feeding).  I finally had to go into the bathroom not to get privacy but to try to give my baby a little less interesting stimulus to keep him from the task at hand.  It was interesting how many women had lovely comments about breastfeeding, like it was some sort of club that only a few of us belong to.... I have to remind myself that in most of the world, breastfeeding is simply the way baby's eat and not any sort of political statement.  But I like when women tell me what they remember best from their breastfeeding days (milky smiles are a common sentiment).

Our week in Tennessee started off on a balmy foot, something like 60-70 degrees the first couple of days, and we were just lovin' it.  I got to meet my cousin's new baby, and find out how feather-lite a 12 pounder can feel after carting around a 20 lb. baby all the time!  Her first child, now 3, was lovely to get to see again--that's a fun age, despite the normal struggle she's going through to deal with sharing the attention with a new little sister.  My grandmother attempted to hold my little chunk, but at 90 years old, he was a little too big and heavy for her!  I got some really cute pictures made of me with my big baby slung to my front and my Tennessee childhood best friend, Christy, with her slim little elf-like 9 month old daughter slung to her front. I have to figure out how to get pictures up on this site and I will be happy to share.  It's so adorable I feel like baby carrier web stores are going to offer me jewels and gold to use the pic on their site, but maybe I'm a bit biased about the babies (and the lovely mamas) cuteness factor.  :o)

My friend Jennifer, who's a nurse, and just moved in last year to her and her husband's first home, had us over for dinner, which was lovely.  While we were over there, Aleksi pitched one of his now daily scream-arch-back-and-fight-sleeping-and-eating routines while we were over there so I had to try to help him succumb to his tiredness and hunger which can take more than an hour sometimes.  So I don't know how much fun we were to have over, but I know Jennifer's a sucker for babies, even tired, cranky babies, so I think we're safe.  Plus they cooked for us some yummy fish I had never heard of (Tilapi!  Good stuff) and I got to indulge in my favorite coffee haägen dazs ice cream while over there (they don't have that stuff in Finland!  You'd think with the funny dots over the 'a' and everything they'd have it in Scandinavia, know what I mean?).  So it was a huge success of an evening in my book.  My mother cooked up great big dinners in the middle of the day, southern style, which kind of surprised me since she wasn't into big elaborate meal preparations before, so I defiantly like the influence her new beau has had on her!  She also had a lovely tree, with all my childhood ornaments decorating it, up to celebrate Aleksi's arrival, complete with a stocking with his name hand-embroidered.  She is defiantly doing great on this Grandma gig.  She even rocked him to sleep in her arms on the easy-chair, and I don't think anyone has ever managed to do that before (get him to sleep and have him stay asleep on them), besides me of course.

Which kind of brings me to another thread--my husband has all the love and commitment in the world for the daddy gig, but not very much interest or self-confidence in any of the nitty gritty details that go with it.  I wonder if I'm the only mama who is rolling their eyes when their husband's act helpless about a poopy diaper, either just ignoring it or asking me to come save the situation.  I also give him a really exasperated look if he announces to me, after holding/entertaining baby for, oh, five minutes, that 'I need to get something to eat now.'  *Pause afterwards with an expectant look that I am to drop whatever I'm doing to run and swoop the baby away so he can grab a slice of toast and sit at the table pouring over The Economist*  The reason I'm completely underwhelmed by his husband's severe attack of hunger and apparent inability to chew and hold baby, is that I eat *every* meal with baby strapped to my front, and even clean the kitchen up afterwards, and even scrub the floors clean, all with baby on me.  Heck, from my prior musings you probably already know about my ability to breastfeed, scrub a floor, and change the laundry from washer to dryer, all at the same time.  And he can't put a slice of toast into the toaster and then place a piece of turkey and cheese on it and proceed to eat it (with both hands free because he uses the sling, too) with the baby hanging around?  Un-impressed, I say.  Am I being over critical of my poor, overworked husband who takes on zillions of projects at a time so that I can stay at home and buy cute diapers?  Probably, but still, a mama has to have her few minutes to herself too, ya know?  So I find myself getting up in the middle of the night and really slowly removing myself from the bed between Matti & Aleksi and tiptoeing away like a cat burglar.  Then I do stuff like write email and take my time chatting to a friend online.  

But I digress--trip details aren't over.  We leave Tennessee to go back up to New York City for a few days before leaving the US, and we are greeted with way-below-freezing-temperatures.  I was all in favor of holing up indoors and watching movies, but I relented to leave the house once to go out for Sushi with my friend Jamie & his girlfriend (and of course Matti, Aleksi, and Jen) who came from Boston to meet with us while we were in the US.  I loved the Sushi--I'm so glad we went.  But the cold was frigid and I was anxious to get back inside at Jen and her parents' house where Matti developed an endearing relationship with their dog, Sadie.  He has never, ever liked a dog before but this one--he digs.  It's probably because she has the most likeable personality ever to be had by a canine critter.  I'm more of a cat person myself, but I really like Sadie, and even like rubbing her tummy, so needless to say she adores me now and forever.  :o)

After a nice long rest, we head back to Finland, and that trip was relatively uneventful, and altogether easy--Aleksi has a knack of sleeping through entire flights, and if he's fussy when we board a plane, the rumble of take off, with the vibrations and everything, soothes him right down.  When we got back into our house, we were so thrilled by the living standards that greeted us--despite the US being the richest country in the world, it seems relatively impossible to get a shower with consistent, ever lasting, truly hot water!  Down in Tennessee we were bathing with well water, which gets heated by a water heater one batch at a time, so Matti found out in the unpleasant way that if you jump in after your wife who loves hot baths, (but of course the water only runs warm) you might only get enough water to fill up your tub, but no hot water to rinse off with afterwards ( he was most distressed at this prospect, the poor guy--I was sure for a minute after he called for me from the tub when I was trying to breastfeed, that he was going to have me call the water heater company and complain).  Of course if you wait, it comes back, but that is something that just doesn't happen in Finland.  You can crank it up to scalding temperatures and let it run for as long as you want and it will stay hot.  Even in Jen's bathtub, despite the luxuriousness of the interior decor, the plumbing is just a bit tricky, it not being a recently built home.  They just have gotten the heating aspects of indoor life down pat here in Finland, which is really nice since I love to prance around in a t-shirt and bare feet in the dead of winter (maybe from growing up in Hawaii?), and here I can!  No issues with a drafty home in this country.  It is odd, though, isn't it, that the US is so rich yet hasn't stolen any of Finland's master building techniques for itself?  In Tennessee, I can understand, but in Connecticut it gets very cold, as we found out!  

Anyway, good to be back, good to be back.  It was good to get away of course but it was lovely to come home, with our bags packed full of all my ebay shopping.  I do have more cute diapers than our bedroom seems to be able to hold, however.... is that a sign of an addiction maybe? 

January 16, 2004

I totally subconsciously censored some stuff yesterday.  I don't know why I forgot to mention this but two things that pop into my head that you might find interesting: 

1)Airline Flight Attendants are nutty:  why, you may ask?  Because they all have a different story to tell on what's the safest way to have an infant if they don't have their own seat purchased (we'd never leave Finland if we had to buy 3 seats!!!).  When we took the plane from Helsinki to New York, I had Aleksi across my lap breastfeeding for take off, and they gave me a seatbelt for him to wrap around his waist and hook onto my seat belt.  That was all fine and dandy except how dangerous is that??? Can you imagine him laying horizontally across my lap and only secured by his waist and then heavy turbulence comes??? Then he would get really painful whiplash by having his body painfully bent at his waist.  But of course there was no problem.  Then on the flight from New York to Tennessee, I had him snuggly asleep, wrapped against my front from head to toe, in the safest possible way.  If turbulence had rocked the plane, and I was buckled in, there's no way Aleksi would be hurt, or even move much at all, as snug as he was wrapped against me in the pikkuruu.  But they told me that wasn't allowed and that I had to hold him over one shoulder with a hand bracing his head, in a 'burp' hold.  HUH?  What The F***?  So basically I just uncovered his head from the sling, and covered the remaining bits of fabric with a blanket so it looked like I had taken him out of his snug, safe, contraption but I really hadn't.  Worked like a charm in foolin' the lady.  Then on the flight from Tennessee to New York they said that I was supposed to hold him with my arms crossed over him and him against my chest, but she thought for two seconds and said....I guess he's fine like that.  Actually using her own judgment.  Wow.  So in the sling/wrap he stayed.  Then on the flight from New York to Finland they didn't say a thing to us at all.  Just gave us a bib and a toy with Finnair logos on them, and of course the safety items they have to give us like the baby life vest and the little seatbelt thingy.  A little coherence on airline baby policies would be good, don't you think?  Oh, also they had me remove him from his sling for both flights going east and then south, but then on the return flights, going from TN to NYC and then from NYC to Helsinki they let me leave Aleksi wrapped up in there.  Huh....  go fig.  But anyway, that's the bizarro-world of flying with an infant whom would just as soon sleep through the whole thing against your chest, listening to your heartbeat wrapped snug against you (mom would just as soon have her hands free to carry her carry-ons, too, know what I mean?). 

2)  I was walking up and down the aisles, breastfeeding Aleksi, on the flight to New York because sometimes he just can't handle eating in a boring, laying down position--he needs action and scenery passing by his little face, so I have to actually pace the plane (mostly I spend my life pacing the apartment, and breastfeeding him in the sling), hoping no one gets offended by my child munching away at the Fountain of Mom.  But someone had a right to get offended at one point because Aleksi bobbed off my breast during a particularly fierce let down, and of course  decided to take his hand and press my breast in such a way that it pointed my nipple up and to the left, and the poor man sleeping to the left of us on the plane got a milk shower on his face.  I only saw this in my peripheral vision, and kept walking, my face turning red.  I was so embarassed but yet couldn't keep from letting a little muffled burst of laughter escape, and then wondered how on earth I would have the nerve to walk back by them again!!  But I did and no harm was done, I wasn't even sure which person it was walking back by, and no one seemed angry or confused.  It made a great story to tell in America! 

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