And so on August 4th Maxime, Henri and I left the U.S. for what is Henri and I's first expatriate experience. The previous month was made up of a whirlwind of activity from getting passports and visas to family visits. Now we were finally headed over the Pacific (via L.A.) for Taipei.
Our first 4 hour flight with Henri went surprisingly well - after his bottle during take off he went to sleep, only to wake up just before the descent. I removed his blanket, planning to change his diaper before preparing his bottle for the descent when I smelled the most horrendous smell that had ever emanated from my son. I realized that at some point Henri had one of his infamous poo poo explosions and that it had soaked through not only his outfit but the car seat cover as well. The next few paragraphs are not for the faint of heart...
Upon realizing I had a huge mess to clean the pilot made his announcement that we were headed down into L.A. and that he would soon be turning on the fasten seat belt sign. I was up against the clock. Being that the car seat was full of poop we carried Henri in it to the front lavatory. Little did we know the car seat was actually leaking poop so we left a nice trail behind us. I plunked Henri down in the tiny changing table positioned above the toilet and went to work, stripping him naked and using up nearly an entire package of wipes (thanks Mara!). Meanwhile the plane is descending and it's bumpy - Henri is crying so I keep stuffing the pacifier in his mouth instructing him to suck! suck! as he was supposed to be drinking a bottle for the pressure in his ears at this point, not having his entire body scraped clean of poo.
Meanwhile, Maxime is trying to clean the car seat only to realize it was beyond a quick fix. The flight attendant gave us some trash bags to line the seat - Henri was now in his only spare outfit for the trip and we rushed back to our seats (still leaking excrement) with no time to spare. We landed and picked up the car seat to find a puddle of poo beneath. Other than just being gross and a little embarrassing this meant we couldn't put anything in the boot of the stroller - and anyone traveling with a baby overseas (or anywhere) would know, we don't travel light. So now there is a fair amount of schlepping going on. I'm just imagining us walking through the terminal, dripping poo, with a stink cloud surrounding us, repelling innocent bystanders with our odor. Henri is now laying on garbage bags instead of a soft seat and I'm pretty sure I'm covered in poo.
My original plan was to call my friends and family during our two hour layover in L.A. Instead I spent the majority of the time in the public bathroom by the gate scrubbing and disassembling the car seat and attempting to find the source of our leaking problem. Not only am I elbow deep in it, I'm spending a significant time in a stinky public bathroom which is incredibly unpleasant to begin with. Lucky for Henri he had a spare outfit - I did not - so I went into the only store in our terminal and bought the ugliest Los Angeles tee shirt and sweatshirt you have ever seen. Now I look the part of a frumpy American tourist.
Now that the car seat was as clean as it was going to get, we lined it with the airplane blankets we had stolen from the first class seats on the previous plane.
Now we were on our way. My plan B was to call at least family from the plane. We were first to board so this shouldn't be a problem. We find our bulkhead seat and begin to settle in. We started to strap Henri's seat into the chair and a flight attendant comes over to "assist." Apparently they are very concerned that they can't buckle it in as firmly as they would like. They start telling us that we may have to check our poopy car seat which is distressing to me considering I just spent the last couple of hours making it usable and we purchased a seat so we wouldn't have to hold the baby for 13 hours... There are 3-4 of them standing around the seat, speaking in mandarin, shaking their heads. Meanwhile frumpy me is standing nearby in just about everyone's way, trying to at least connect with my mom before take off. In the end, they let us keep it - but once again, my plan to call family was thwarted. I spoke to mom for maybe 30 seconds before being told to hang up my phone.
And so our trip to our new home started a little messier than planned. We spent the next 13 hours getting the occasional whiff of poo - Henri did great which I have come to expect from him. He slept a great deal and I don't remember any crying episodes (maybe some fussing here and there).
I was worried about checking in to our hotel (The Shangri-La -Maxime's new place of employment/our temp. home) looking like a hooligan but Maxime assured me no one would notice at midnight, which was when we were arriving. We were picked up at the airport in a van with wifi, so we were finally able to call home via Skype.
We arrived at the hotel and were greeted by a welcoming party - the chef, Maxime's asst. f&b, etc. So there went sneaking by in my embarrassing clothes... Oh well.
I spent the first week of our stay here getting adjusted to the time change - it took poor Henri a week to straighten out day and night - a 13 hour time change is rather challenging for a 5 month old - but he's back to sleeping through the night - about 10-11 hour stretches.
The second week has brought some new experiences which I will share in future posts (which I promise to make much briefer).
I will leave you with a picture of Henri having a little tummy time at the roof top pool.
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