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Special thanks go out to whomever the gentleman is that traded us seats on the flight from Chicago to London. With the nearly-two-year-old on our laps, 9-hours is a pretty long time. Thankfully a kind chap happened to have an empty seat on either side of him, so after the trade MJ got her own and Laura and I got a well-needed respite from the bouncing baby girl on our laps.

We chose an over-night flight thinking Meadow would sleep the whole way, but learned a lesson: we forgot to take into account the time difference. Even though we left at 8PM Chicago time and arrived 9AM London time, this translated into 4PM - 12AM Juneau time. So Meadow’s body wasn't ready for nighty-nighty until about an hour before landing.

Meadow is an exceptionally great traveler and barely fussed the whole flight. Unfortunately, everyone else on the plane was trying to sleep and some of them weren't so appreciative of Meadow's squealing exclamations about Dora and Elmo. (You can definitely tell the difference between a person who has never been a parent and one that has by the way they look at you and your toddler on a long flight).

So we didn’t get much sleep on the plane but nevertheless disembarked Friday morning at Heathrow happy and excited. Customs was pleasant, and they fast-tracked us because of the baby.

Outside the terminal we were greeted like family by Dot and Pop. Zed's folks took immediate care of us, showing us a bit of the English countryside as we drove to their house. MJ immediately warmed to them and in no time was regaling them with stories of her many adventures and singing of the ABCs.

Our tactic to combat the jet lag is to force ourselves to stay up as long as possible, until we get on the right schedule. So we spent Friday drinking tea and eventually napped-out at around 2PM for a few hours, woke up, had dinner, visited some more, and went back to bed late in the evening. Meadow’s clock seems to be the most effected, and she has the least amount of will-power for combating the lag, so (much to Mommy and Daddy’s non-joy) she awoke brightly this Saturday morning at 4AM, ready to take on the world. I got up with her, she had some grapes and cottage cheese, I had some very strong coffee, and we then proceeded to look for birds in the backyard while the sun rose.

We’ve got a loose agenda for the next 9 days here in England: visit a miniature village, get Laura a haircut, go have tea in various groovy spots, and maybe hit a pub or three.