Begin Home Leave (yes this is out of order)

We left on May 1. As we ran to a cafe for a snack in the morning, we were reminded that it's May Day and there's parades on Nevsky and it will take forever to get to the airport. Luckily our ride came early.

The first leg seemed like it would be a terrifying taste of things to come as Zoltan didn't want to be happy (fair enough, it was time for 2nd nap and he hadn't even had nap #1 yet). Alex was a bit rough too, but not too bad. We didn't have much time in Frankfurt, just enough to get through security, immigration, and on to our gate with maybe 15 minutes to spare. Good thing we went the Snugli route rather than waiting for the stroller planeside!

We were on a 777, so it's a 2-5-2 configuration. Our seats were the bulkhead aisle and window, plus the two seats on the other side of the aisle. It was an empty plane, so the 2 seats next to us were empty. Score! Zoltan was so happy in his own seat he stayed calm and quiet during takeoff - I was surprised the flight crew let him sit alone but wasn't going to disturb the equilibrium.

We discovered that the armrest on the window seat didn't stay up so our plan of Alex sleeping there on the 2 seats was about to go out the window, until I remembered her lacing cards. I tied 2 of the laces together, used them to hold the armrest up and tied it off to the headrest. Photos to follow. The poor thing lay down and tried to sleep but just couldn't do it. Too much light. So I lay 2 blankets across the tops of the seats to create a little cave for her, and she did eventually, finally, go to sleep. We didn't hear from her again until we had to wake her for landing - it's lucky we had a reasonable flight crew because there were a few instances of turbulence and they allowed the slipshod way we draped the seatbelt around her - technically it was fastened around her but really it wasn't going to do much.

Zoltan was, as usual, the challenge. In the end Terry walked and rocked him until he fell asleep, probably a good 40-50 minutes' work. The boys sat down in the aisle seat and every 30 minutes without fail, Z stirred and T had to get up for a stroll around the plane. He did end up getting a good 4h of sleep though, and both Terry and I managed to doze a bit during the lulls. At least, the flight seemed to take less time than we thought, so we think we slept.

And, Alex did the whole thing in panties. Not an accident, even a teeny one.