sleepless over the pond

(Axel checking out the bassinet on our plane, for which he was 3 kilograms overweight.)

Two nights before we left, Axel woke up eight times before 4am. Mychal had left that morning for his work trip, so I had to muster the wherewithall to get down the steps and to Axel's room eight times in a row. By 5am, after having spent the entire night trying to soothe a fit-throwing and hysterical toddler, I turned off the monitor and gave up. Eventually Axel must have gone to sleep, because when I came downstairs two hours later, totally refreshed, he was asleep.

Needless to say, that night was nothing compared to the horror of our red-eye flight. My vision of Axel as a seasoned, easy-going traveler, and myself as the uber-competent mother of such a cosmopolitan, exploded in the hands of that fit-throwing, hysterical toddler. It was awful. Beyond awful even. I wanted to cry. And hand Axel off to the stewardesses.

But the lovely Germans would have none of it (we flew Lufthansa). They scarcely acknowledged us, some sort of professional self-preservation, I have to think. So Axel thrashed and harangued, throwing his 34 pounds liberally across our seats and into the aisles. Which only wore him out the equivalent of a one-hour nap and gave me twin rug burns on my forearms from lunging across the seat to catch him. Sadly, my attempt at translating "A two-year old is the best natural birth control!" for our German seat-mates was muddled.

Especially since that night was just the preview of what was to come the next two nights. All I'm going to say about that is that by the time woke up in Lviv, three days later, Axel had slept a cumulative 11 hours. Not pretty.