the way home (part1)

What we are learning today…
The bright side of traveling with a toddler is that you are seldom bored. The dark side: new-found freedoms are not given up without formidable protests.
We tried to stay up late last night to begin shifting our internal clocks around a bit. Well, we stayed up a bit later, and Ivanna woke up a bit earlier. Yay. We cleaned ourselves up a bit and then headed out for a walk over to Shevshenko Park, where we played for a while. Despite one noisy vote against leaving, we headed down Shevshenko boulevard (for those of you on GoogleEarth) to our grocery store to pick up a few edible/drinkable souvenirs. After that, our last shawarmas by the master. Ivanna was pretty tired by the time we were on our way home (asleep, actually), so Shona moved her to the bed for a shortish nap. We woke her up before 2 so that she’d be ready to go when Lesya and her husband picked us up. Finally the time came and we said good-bye to our apartment. Jonathan told us that Kyiv would become home for us eventually, and I think some elements stood in for a while with some pseudo-hominess for a while. We will likely recall a lot of things and feel a bit sentimental fairly soon.
Everything went well checking in and getting to our gate, except that the security gate seemed to take forever to open. But eventually, it did and we boarded our plane. Well, once on board, the captain told us that the flight controllers would not let us take off for another 30 or 40 minutes. It was not welcome news. (for those of you who did not know, we had 35 minutes between landing in Munich and taking off on our next flight – you do the math). We said a little prayer. I was kind of thinking that as long as we head West, we are going in the right direction and would trust that we would make our connection in Toronto tomorrow. Well, a while later the captain said that we had been bumped up a bit (but probably still not enough for us to make our connection). A while later still, the engines fired up and we were off. Long story somewhat shortened: we made our connection and, since the flight ended up having a bit of space, Ivanna had her own seat (except for taking off and landing – see above comment). It was wonderful! Needless to say, the plumbing fixtures on Shona are a bit loose today – for VERY good reason. We are now in London, waiting to find out the gate we’ll use for our flight to NFLD. Ivanna is overdone, but overjoyed to be able to run around a bit (on a harness/leash held by Shona – thanks Michelle E.). We are really hoping she winds down enough to sleep a bit between here and St. John’s. We love her, but at this point, Shona and I could both use a break at the same time.
Oh, one other thing, it is a very interesting experience being able to just read everything by looking at it, instantly.

Later…after running about madly, Ivanna had a bit of a meltdown. It’s very understandable. She was overtired and in a hyper-stimulating environment (Heathrow is not what one might call serene). We managed to calm her a bit by taking her to a baby change room to get a break from the noise and sights and people, and so that she could cool off (she got pretty warm). She fired up a bit again on the way to our gate, but fell asleep and slept the whole flight to St. John’s. Once again, there was a spare seat for her to lie down on. It was good. Shona managed a few winks (between kicks from Ivanna – man, does she ever thrash at points in her sleep) and I got about 30 minutes or so. We are now in the bathroom of our hotel room in St. John’s. Shona got Ivanna to sleep once in the hotel room with quiet and darkness, and we are hoping to keep her that way for a while (and hoping to join her soon).