I'm happy to report that the intercontinental travel went well!
We said a hug-filled goodbye to Daddy who dropped us off at Dulles airport at about 3:30pm on July 4th.
Toby kept entertained at the gate with a new pirate-themed activity book - you can see our plane in the background.
He paid close attention to the safety announcement...
... and found the games on the screen amazingly quickly!
He slept for about 3 hours on the flight from Dulles to Heathrow (7 hours).
When we got off the flight, we asked if the captain could sign Toby's flight log (he got a kids flight log on his first flight on American Airlines when he was 4 months old), which the captain was very happy to do - he even invited Toby to sit in the cockpit!
We had about 3 hours to kill in Heathrow until our flight to Kenya; we rested, we ate breakfast, and we played in the "family lounge".
Toby settled in well for the flight from Heathrow to Nairobi (8 hours), and spent most of the time reading or playing on his iPad.
But he suddenly got very tired and fell asleep nearly mid-sentence about half an hour before we landed. I carried him off the plane, asleep, along with my two carry-on bags. We'd had a 4.5 hour flight delay coming home from a vacation to Florida recently and I realized that I could have carried him off the plane sleeping if I didn't have my roller bag, so that was my strategy for this trip - which paid off.
We finally got to sleep at about midnight. We both slept A LOT (thank you, melatonin)! I slept 11 hours - I can't remember the last time I slept that long, and Toby slept about 11.5 hours. I did a lot of unpacking the next morning - er, afternoon, on Friday. We did make it to the museum in Nairobi for a short time to say hi to folks there, which was great fun - my Kenyan colleagues have only known Toby from pictures I post of him on Facebook until now!
Here's an American researcher who studies fossil primates showing Toby a 15 million year old monkey face...
...and here's Toby marveling at a modern whale skull.
After that we went back to the apartment where we're staying, and Toby tried out the mosquito net over his bed.
In the early evening, "Uncle Rick" (my boss) and "Aunt Jenny" (another good colleague and friend) came back into town. They are sharing the apartment with us until they go to their field site tomorrow. We walked up the street to a nice hotel to have dinner out, and came back and eventually fell asleep.
The next day (today, Saturday), we did some errands in the morning after Jenny delivered on her promise of a pillow fight with Toby, which they both enjoyed.
Then we went up to the museum for a little while so I could work with Rick on a project we're doing together studying fossils from a series of ~1 million year old excavations at a site where Rick has been working for about 35 years - the site he and Jenny are leaving for tomorrow. I made good use of the LEGOs I schlepped over and Toby happily played with my Kenyan Museum colleague Rose's two kids. It was especially sweet to see because Rose was pregnant with her daughter Esther while I was pregnant with Toby!
Rose really enjoyed meeting Toby, too.
We're starting to get back onto a somewhat normal schedule; let's hope that trend continues tomorrow (Sunday)!
We said a hug-filled goodbye to Daddy who dropped us off at Dulles airport at about 3:30pm on July 4th.
Toby kept entertained at the gate with a new pirate-themed activity book - you can see our plane in the background.
He paid close attention to the safety announcement...
... and found the games on the screen amazingly quickly!
He slept for about 3 hours on the flight from Dulles to Heathrow (7 hours).
When we got off the flight, we asked if the captain could sign Toby's flight log (he got a kids flight log on his first flight on American Airlines when he was 4 months old), which the captain was very happy to do - he even invited Toby to sit in the cockpit!
We had about 3 hours to kill in Heathrow until our flight to Kenya; we rested, we ate breakfast, and we played in the "family lounge".
Toby settled in well for the flight from Heathrow to Nairobi (8 hours), and spent most of the time reading or playing on his iPad.
But he suddenly got very tired and fell asleep nearly mid-sentence about half an hour before we landed. I carried him off the plane, asleep, along with my two carry-on bags. We'd had a 4.5 hour flight delay coming home from a vacation to Florida recently and I realized that I could have carried him off the plane sleeping if I didn't have my roller bag, so that was my strategy for this trip - which paid off.
We finally got to sleep at about midnight. We both slept A LOT (thank you, melatonin)! I slept 11 hours - I can't remember the last time I slept that long, and Toby slept about 11.5 hours. I did a lot of unpacking the next morning - er, afternoon, on Friday. We did make it to the museum in Nairobi for a short time to say hi to folks there, which was great fun - my Kenyan colleagues have only known Toby from pictures I post of him on Facebook until now!
Here's an American researcher who studies fossil primates showing Toby a 15 million year old monkey face...
...and here's Toby marveling at a modern whale skull.
After that we went back to the apartment where we're staying, and Toby tried out the mosquito net over his bed.
In the early evening, "Uncle Rick" (my boss) and "Aunt Jenny" (another good colleague and friend) came back into town. They are sharing the apartment with us until they go to their field site tomorrow. We walked up the street to a nice hotel to have dinner out, and came back and eventually fell asleep.
The next day (today, Saturday), we did some errands in the morning after Jenny delivered on her promise of a pillow fight with Toby, which they both enjoyed.
Then we went up to the museum for a little while so I could work with Rick on a project we're doing together studying fossils from a series of ~1 million year old excavations at a site where Rick has been working for about 35 years - the site he and Jenny are leaving for tomorrow. I made good use of the LEGOs I schlepped over and Toby happily played with my Kenyan Museum colleague Rose's two kids. It was especially sweet to see because Rose was pregnant with her daughter Esther while I was pregnant with Toby!
Rose really enjoyed meeting Toby, too.
We're starting to get back onto a somewhat normal schedule; let's hope that trend continues tomorrow (Sunday)!
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