Home - And Still on the Mend

We arrived home last night after 17 hours of door-to-door travel. Jack was a champ! This was really nice for us as both Mick and I caught Jack's cold (no surprise). Mick's in worse shape than I am with pretty intense chest pain every time he coughs. He has an appointment to see the doctor later this morning. (This is only the second time in ten years I've heard Mick say he "needs" to see a doctor asap and the last time was pretty awful... so I've got my fingers crossed that whatever he has now isn't too bad...) I've just got my usual sinus infection so the ascent and descent in the planes was a bit rough for me given all of the pressure.

Jack was in such fantastic spirits yesterday though that it made our travel a million times better. He slept on Mick for about two hours on our flight from Manchester to Chicago and then played happily on the plane for the remaining 6 1/2 hours. The worst part of our travel was the layover in Chicago. We had to clear customs & immigration, get our luggage, then re-check our luggage and go BACK through security for the flight to Detroit. Poor Jack had been constrained for about 9 hours by this point and just wanted to run. But the security lines were long and moving at a snail's pace (our line only had one screening machine that worked so it took ages to get through). My lone meltdown of the journey home came not long after we finally got through security and were boarding our flight to Detroit. I only handed the ticket agent one ticket and then looked at Mick for the other one. He said he didn't think we had another one. I tried to set everything down so I could look (stroller, diaper bag, Jack's backpack, two coats, one sweatshirt, etc.) and my coins flew everywhere. I said a few choice words (stress relief) and then realized I was holding the other ticket. Nice.

Jack was so great though on the flight from Chicago to Detroit that we had multiple people comment on what a happy kid he was. They were all pretty surprised when I told them how long we'd been traveling. By the time we took the shuttle bus to get our car, I think some of Jack's silliness was due to him being overtired but he never had a tantrum - which is saying a lot for a kid his age. He dropped off in the car on the way home and then continued sleeping right through the night - until 4:45 this morning. Jet lag is tough on little ones!

I have some good videos of our time with Chris, Jan, and Harry -- particularly Jack kicking around a football (soccer ball). I will post the videos as soon as I've unpacked and loaded the videos and pictures to my computer.

We're looking forward to a return visit in June where all three of us are healthy. Being sick at any time is not fun. But when you're thousands of miles from home and feel torn between visiting with everyone you want to see and just spending the day in bed, it's even tougher.