Returning home May 11 - 31, 2004 Trip with a merry infant and pathetic professionals; every few days, we risk drowning our child; Tommy eats veggies, fruits, and sand.

	Gimme that shot! Grandpa taught Tom how to drink out of a glass.

On May 10, Sid had set his watch alarm to three thirty, so we would not miss the flight. My dad woke us at quarter to four -- well, nobody's perfect -- Sid had set the buzz to half past three -- but P.M.! We suddenly had to speed up things a bit, poor Tommy was all rubbery, but we were going to make it. Our departing committee was, on the account of such early hour, somewhat smaller that the welcoming one -- only grandpa came along, and on the way we picked up Martina, who took care of our rental car (some people simply amaze me with their selflessness).

The airport was unbelievably crowded. Everybody who needs to catch long-distance flight connections at greater European airports, is forced to fly out of Prague by seven in the morning. Besides, a world championships in hockey that took place in Prague just ended, but CSA (Czech Airlines) was processing all early flights through altogether two (yes, two) counters (there are about 80 available). After a large group counting some fifty heads arrived to the lobby, it meant complete saturation of all those zigzag tapes in front of those two poor CSA agents and the line began to unfurl along the whole hall. At this time someone must have decided it can't go like this anymore and two more counters opened. When it almost became our turn, a uniformed youngster showed up and demanded that we move with the baby to business class counter to get priority processing. Since he sifted through our line from back to the front, we ended queuing up *behind* all the families who came after us. And, as we found out, in a line to a ground attendant IN TRAINING.

	Don't mess with me... or else.

She dealt with the first family for about twenty minutes, and I came to be slightly tense; this kind of "preferential" treatment for families with small babies (i.e. sending them to a longer and slower line) seemed to me quite peculiar. After the next family (another twenty minutes) I verbalized my feelings -- and received a prompt reply from a prison guard, who hovered over the trainee clerk. I did not notice her before, as she managed to blend into the background, but now I could not believe my eyes and ears. I would, for example, expect from an individual, who's job is to interact with business class customers, to at least set her greasy looking, medium length hair strands into a bunch. It would somewhat disperse my impression that she in fact was a recently drowned zombie. But I mostly was not prepared for a tone of a maritime bar hooker and a speech in the sense, "... bein' in a hurry, are ya? well you'll hafta wait and that's that. and if ya don't like it, I will just refuse to deal with ya and the plane will leave without ya, and I don't give a damn."
I must say I was rendered speechless for a longer while -- I really would not expect that CSA employs people who THREATEN their customers. We stayed, however, in the line -- and I started to get fascinated by the act Miroslava Hanibalová was performing. She might not have realized that we -- unlike most other travellers -- understood her every word. Her advice to the poor shaky beginner consisted of hissing and coarse commands like, "whaddya doin', can't ya read?", "what'ya doin' with them tickets?!?", "now you're gonna hafta cancel it all and start all over", "you're impossible, whaddya doin'?!?"
The trained girl's hands were shaking so much she was not able to fit our boarding passes into a folder, and during the whole procedure she did not dare to lift her eyes off her desk. She must have been a real newbie, working this pathetically slowly as she was, but the evil hissing from over her shoulder would not improve anyone's effectiveness. I must say that I rather admired her. Till today I am unsure whether I would, in her place, tell the b!tch Hannibal to take this job and shove it, leaving with my head held high, or whether I would break down and cry hysterically, eventually running away. Although our check-in eventually went with no further hindrance, the whole story leaves an ugly aftertaste -- like if I had witnessed somebody kicking a small puppy unconscious.

	Our little comedian

This awful check-in procedure deprived us of the time to sit down with my dad and have breakfast; we were almost due for boarding. After waiting in another line, this time for passport control, a woman in a booth yelled at me, "don't you try to get through here with that stroller, you would not fit!", throwing us thus out to line up in another queue (naturally the longest one) at the only booth widened for the disabled. I felt a dejà vu - again we were enjoying "being cared for" while traveling with a baby at the Prague airport.

At the gate I resigned to a fact that the fifty-some headed group of men, whom I guessed to be hockey fans, would go on the same flight with us. Further, no pre-boarding was ever announced, but I did not care -- this was apparently to be a hell of a day. Think survival, I told myself. We slowly approached the long line and suddenly I felt like Moses at the Red Sea. The chaps in front of us parted to let us ride right through with our stroller. Their southern accent made it clear whence such sudden courtesy came -- these were no Europeans.
At the CSA plane, another nice surprise awaited me -- a cordial, young female attendant, who uttered a few sentences about babies, brought a rattler for Tommy (you may think I'm being silly, but KLM distributed playcards and pictures among kids on board, and we're simply not that far, despite me being convinced that my six-months old child is really a genius). The CSA attendant further assured me we could always call on her, for she was there for us. As on the previous flight, we got a triple seat and one man from the aforementioned group was our immediate neighbor -- as we found out soon, they were no hockey fan, but a baptist choir. He did not stay our neighbor for long -- right after takeoff, the attendant offered him an opportunity to move to a whole empty row of seats, to give us all more room. Simply put, after getting on the plane, Tom stopped to be invisible. What keeps bugging me till today, is the abysmal difference between completely professional, courteous flying attendants, and the arrogance and incompetence of the ground staff of the Czech Airlines.

	Tommy's new room

Another crisis awaited us in Amsterdam -- after we passed a security checkpoint into the gate, a loud explosion sounded - from the approximate area of Tom's diaper. Even from a distance one could reckon that our child was momentarily violating Geneva Conventions (those banning use of chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction). We had no other choice than to explain to the guards that we simply must get back into the greater airport area, and seek out a baby changing facility. I suggested preemptively that I can also change Tom on one of their examination tables; this offer effected their immediate and flawless cooperation. I must say that even at the very civilized changing station I was ultimately and utterly defeated -- Tom was entering our plane fully clothed minus his socks, which I did not save from being contaminated. One must be grateful for every little thing -- I really cannot imagine how I would have dealt with this calamity on a tiny changing table tilted towards a toilet bowl -- the affair offered in KLM aircraft bathrooms for the next eleven hours of flight.

My dark forebodings about a child more or less lively for the whole duration of our flight, which took place during daytime hours, perfectly matched reality. Tom refused to sleep, refused to be held, refused to sit and quietly busy himself by chewing on some toy -- he demanded to jump. Having discovered jumping some time in the middle of our vacation trip, once anybody took him under his arms, he began to strut up with his legs on the person's lap, and bounced up and down like a yo-yo. After finally all exhausted, he slumped down into his aircraft bassinet, I discovered that across the aisle there sat a deaf old lady and her companion. She dozed off, but the geezer did not mind -- for the whole eleven hours, he continued in his monologue so loud, it cut right through the roar of the plane's engines. We were not to sleep.

	Tom and his green veggie mush...

At San Francisco, there were two rather shaky parents, and one jolly baby. At the exit of the aircraft, we were flatly told that it may be that we had requested to have our stroller brought there upon arrival, but perhaps they don't do that in San Francisco. We disagreed, as we had it done before on our way out, however the KLM attendant was very definite. There won't be any stroller, period. Sid subsequently intercepted and yelled at a local employee who admitted to be responsible for these things, but even that did not yield the stroller. We were simply privileged to grab Tom in our arms, plus the car seat shell we brought him in, plus all other carry-on bags (total three), and trot across the whole airport arrival maze, stand in a queue to immigration and ultimately hope that our light stroller had somehow survived the usual rough handling among other armored and heavy baggage. In the end the same (previously yelled at) SFO employee showed up with our stroller, but nevertheless it looks like the list of airlines with which we are willing to travel in the future, is dramatically shrinking. I must say that I would use KLM again only if forced to.

Irene picked us up at the airport and by five in the afternoon we could all finally fall in our beds. We woke at eleven p.m. just to get some chow and continued sleeping until the next morning. I do sense that this year I worked out all time changes much better than before -- it may be due to having regularly been up with a baby every three hours. A mere nine hour jet lag then feels like not worth mentioning.

	We bathe Tom in a plastic storage box, for tubs are known to be so dangerous that no one makes them.

Two days after having arrived home with Tom, we went to a sixth-month medical checkup. Tom was actually already six and half months, but even so he was pronounced a prototype of a heathy child, quite meeting the standards of a half-year old, full-term baby (he's in fact a bit bigger than a "normal" baby). It seems that his genes won despite the lack of good fortune, and I have been bringing up a promising candidate for a second Hippo -- a nurse found him weighing whole 19 pounds. He received another inoculation -- fortunately Michelle is so skilled that Tom began to scream only after she was on her way out. He then remained predictably moody for the rest of the afternoon, and I tried to improve that by playing with him in our bed. Tom laughs a lot when I kiss him on his neck and on his belly, and pays back the same -- he pulls me close by my hair and lovingly drools on my neck (he did not yet notice that he could close his mouth when doing this). And so we were rolling there when I noticed a locking piece of my earring laying around. I turned the whole bed upside down but could not find the actual earring. I was seriously panicking that I allowed my baby to swallow my earring, and hurried to call the doctor for help. A nurse tried to calm me down, telling me that he would not swallow it so easily, and would make faces and spit, but eventually she promised to talk it over with the doctor and call me back. She did, after a half hour, and told me that they had found my earring there, in the office. You could hear the boulder crumbling that was until then weighing on my heart -- in any case, all my earrings went to a drawer, and until further, I shall wear no jewelry.

	Tom does an airplane over a beach

Having come home made everything stand out more, what Tom had learned during that fortnight. When I'm with him every day, I don't notice the changes that much. His first deed in his old bed was thus: Tom grasped at the vertical bars and attempted to dive over the rail, head first. Now there's something I noticed right away! Further we discovered that it became quite impossible to sleep with him in the same room. However quietly we would creep into our bed, Tommy would always, half-asleep, chastise us (by making noises and rolling back and forth). We also had to admit that after bigger tubs, which we had available back in the Czech Republic, there was not way we could squeeze him into his American, little-baby type tub, which would now only suffice for dipping the tip of his buttock. Unfortunately, clerks in local baby stores gazed at us, disbelieving: How can parents ever WANT anything this dangerous? Why, baby could DROWN is such a thing!!! I consulted the situation with my pen-pals, who also would not understand -- for their first year they made do with the small tub, and later they would put their firmly sitting toddler into a regular adult tub. Well, who's fault is it, that Tom in his six months grew into size 18 - 24 months, yet he would still not sit upright and I cannot imagine myself kneeling down in front of our big tub, holding my 19-pound child with one hand under his head, while trying to wash him with the other (mostly because my back refuses to cooperate even during normal operation -- my morning's putting on panties and socks still looks like a very exotic dance, or epileptic seizure). Well, we eventually gave up our hopes to buy a suitable small tub, and Tom bathes in a plastic storage box. According to American standards, we certainly are certifiably crazy parents.

	To go to a beach with a baby means bringing an unbelievable volume of stuff...

The rest of May I had spent by gradual cleaning of our child's room to be. Until now we used to put all the beautiful things there, which we were reluctant to throw out and which fall into the category "it could be handy". Consequently, I found several long-lost treasures in boxes unopened since our moving in, but in the end I managed to transform a consistent, about three feet high layer of stuff covering the floor, into a relatively cozy child's room. I was curious to find out what Tom will say to his new environment, and I mentally prepared for heart-breaking scenes, where a scared, abandoned baby desperately calls for his mother and father. So: our poor, abandoned, desperate baby sleeps quietly and happily from nine p.m. to six a.m. (but also sometimes till half past nine) and the only one who's heart is breaking from being abandoned, who gazes up the ceiling at nights, and longingly catches every noise from the room next door, is me.

Our last springtime news is extending Tom's diet into vegetables and fruits. After his grandpa taught him how to drink from a glass (a basic beer guzzler's skill!), Tom figured how to drink water, besides milk. My previous attempts to cheat him into drinking water from his nipple-topped milk bottle were always discovered, and very loudly commented, and subsequently spat out. It's a wonder that Tom had accepted cups and glasses with water. He himself added another ingredient to his diet -- a real Californian sand. It's a stone's throw to a beach, and so Tom can run his first physics experiments there (sand pours, but a blanket does not; solid objects can be put into mouth, sand is much more difficult etc.). Not that I would be ecstatic about the idea of him eating sand, but I still think that the one on a beach, regularly washed by the ocean, is much cleaner than any sandbox, hence if he should put some in his hair and load in his diaper (and his mouth), then let it be the beach sand.

Copyright © 2004-2005 by Carol & Sid Paral. All rights reserved.