Somehow, the trip has already ended. It’s almost like in some ways, it just started, but I guess that’s how these trips go. We flew back home via London on British Airways. We were seated in the front row of Business Class, which meant that Kaia got her own little “bassinet,” which was really a more easily adjustable version of a Baby Bjorn chair that could be fully reclined. We had her eat in it sitting quite upright, and it worked really well, but she refused to sleep in it and got fussy. The way that the “bassinet” gets installed is that the baby faces everyone who walks by. So this meant a lot of the flight attendants tried to be friendly with her… which she was not always keen on. Somehow, one flight attendant who really tried to befriend her always elicited crying from her. She refused to like him and got bad vibes from him, and we’re still not quite sure why.

Landing was tough. She had only been napping for maybe a couple hours, and I had to wake her up to get ready to land. She was really upset and cried a lot, and there was really nothing we could do to help her. We tried patting her, singing to her, holding her close, but it all failed. Eventually, I handed her over to Chris, and she calmed down as the plane was descending.

Oh, and here’s a fun little fact about Global Entry: even if both partners have Global Entry and your baby does not (because we didn’t think she could get it), you cannot go through Global Entry; one partner has to take the baby through the regular immigration line for screening. That’s really annoying and stupid, but hey, apparently the people who work at EWR immigration say that’s the way it should be! I was wearing Kaia, so I took her into the regular immigration line while Chris went through Global Entry. And as soon as we separated, Kaia cried a little. Yeah well, that’s how I felt, so I guess we can all agree how dumb and inefficient that was.