The Plane & Our Summer Home!

Ok, sorry for the long wait; we're still waiting for our internet to be connected (welcome to India where things never are done on time!)

Here are a few pictures of the beginning of our adventure! First for the flights. Checking into the airport was CRAZY. 12 Adults + 1 Infant + 25 full sized checked bags = long wait to get checked in.

Our team with our millions of bags to check

Outside the airport, getting ready to say Goodbye to America!

But check in we did, and made it in time to board our first plane. Thankfully we had a short 1 hour flight to Chicago first to ease Landon into this whole flying thing before our flight across the ocean. He did great on flight #1 and fell asleep on my lap for about 35 minutes of it. Perfect!

We had a short layover in Chicago and then boarded our plane for London! The plane ride was made much easier for Landon by this wonderful contraption: 

They called it a cot, but essentially it was like a little carseat almost that strapped onto the table that hung down from the wall. You had to have special bulkhead seats to be in the place where the baby cots could attach. A special seat that we paid $500 for in addition to our 2 tickets. And a special seat that our airline did NOT reserve for us on either of our long flights, even though we paid $500 for it. Apparently they don't reserve the seats out when you buy the tickets, they're given on a first come first serve basis as people check in. So the guy who wants more leg room can take the seat that we paid $500 for. Um, flaw in the system?? Thankfully on both flights the attendants were kind enough to ask people sitting in the special seats to switch with us (I'm sure the whole plane full of people was glad that Landon did not have to sit on our laps for 7 and then 10 hours). Kyle filled out a comment card to our airline (*coughBritishAirwayscough*)

All that being said, Landon did *AMAZING* on our flights. Of the 17 hours, he probably slept approximately 12 of them in his little cot. Here he is on our flight to London with his little French baby friend.

For part of the time he was awake on our flight to India we put a blanket on the floor and let him play at our feet for a little bit. He loved it.

Then the flight attendant told us that wasn't allowed. Oopsie. 

After all the crazy long flights, we finally arrived in India at 5:00 a.m.! (10 and a half hours ahead of our time in America!) Amazingly, ALL of the luggage we had checked made it to India! We were just glad that Landon's bag full of food wasn't lost. Oh my.

The long term team here came and picked us all up at the airport and brought us to the guesthouse we are renting for the summer, which is just a few minute walk down the street from where all of them live. There are 5 bedrooms in the house, so Kyle & I share one with Landon, and then the 5 guys have two rooms and the 5 girls have two rooms. There's a living room, dining area, and kitchen on the first floor and another living room area on our floor along with a wonderful balcony that has turned into our nightly gathering spot when everyone gets home at the end of the day.

Landon receives plenty of attention from our team!

Our room is big enough that we were able to put Landon's pack & play in the corner with a chair in front of it to kind of give him his own space.

Every time he wakes up he scoots himself over to the side of the bed where he can look out and see us and just lays there on his stomach watching till we come get him up. We bought a mosquito net made specially for pack & plays (they call them cots here) to keep him from getting bit at night and catching malaria!

Unfortunately the first few days Landon had a hard time figuring out when was night and when was daytime, aka when to sleep and when to be awake. Anytime I would get frustrated with him he would give me this look like, "Um, your fault for bringing me to a different country." Here he is at 4 in the morning the 3rd day we were here wide awake ready to play. I brought him to our bed & let him play with toys for awhile, then he went back to sleep after I fed him.

Sorry it's a dark video, but it was night time, and I didn't want to turn the light on because I wanted Landon to believe it was night!

There is no such thing as carpet in India, because it's just too dusty. Our floors are all white marble, and obviously very hard, so I didn't want Landon playing on the floor since he has the tendency to tip over. So for the first several days I just set a blanket up on our bed (which is a double bed pushed next to a twin bed. Does that make it a California king bed???)

That worked fine for awhile, but I was always worried about him falling off the bed onto the hard floor, even though the bed was so big. Then, thankfully, one of the long term couples let us borrow a big floor mat that they have to sit on the floor & watch movies when they have people over.

Much better arrangement! So now Landon has been better able to work on his crawling/dragging skills.

The funniest part about our room is the bathroom (every room has a bathroom attached, how great is that?) This is our bathroom:

You might notice that there is no separate shower. The "shower" is just simply a showerhead in the middle of the room. So the entire bathroom gets wet whenever you take a shower. It's hilarious. But that's how they do bathrooms in India. At least you don't have to worry about the shower curtain sticking to you.

Since there's also no bathtub, that presented a dilemma as to how to bathe Landon. Thankfully one of the long term couples has a 2 year old here so they let us borrow a little mini bathtub they had for Maddie. 

We heat up some of the filtered water on the stove and pour it in the tub. Landon LOVES it. He can sit up without me holding onto him and splash in the water. He's so cute at bathtime (which is now every night instead of every 3 days). 

So there are the beginnings of our time in India! For now I'll end the world's longest post with a couple pictures of our little Punkin' that one of our guys on our team took, and a promise to post some funny stories soon!