I just flew in from Moscow, and boy are my arms tired

We finally got back home at 10:30 or so last night (Detroit time), 25 hours after we woke up in the Hotel Peking in Moscow.  Elena's going through a "clinging to mommy" stage, which is perfectly natural, but which includes the bonus "expecting mommy to carry her."  Distances in airports can be quite substantial, and the line for security screening in Washington DC was insanely long, so Teresa's arms really are pretty sore.

Elena actually took the airplane flights pretty well, especially considering she's two years old.  She slept the first couple hours of our Moscow-to-DC flight, and the entire DC-to-Detroit flight.  She started to get really fidgity at the end of the Moscow-to-DC leg, but it's a 10-1/2 hour flight, so most of the adults were feeling the same way.  Most of the adults, however, could restrain themselves from running randomly around the plane, but Elena needed a little help in that department, so it's not like it was a completely uneventful flight by any stretch.

Although the flights were mostly OK, the airports were pretty stressful.  The Moscow airport was crowded and noisy, and way overstimulating for someone used to a regimented routine in a quiet orphanage.  As I mentioned before, the immigration, customs, and especially security waits in DC were completely insane, and Elena melted down in the security line.  Then our DC-to-Detroit flight was delayed for three hours, so we got to spend a lot of extra time waiting in a large, overstimulating gate area.  She finally fell asleep at 7:30 Eastern time, just before the plane started boarding.  That's 3:30 Moscow time, exactly seven hours after her bedtime.

Still, the whole trip was far better than I feared it would be. (We were talking to another couple in the Moscow airport who had adopted a Russian boy three years ago.  On the trip to the US, he repeatedly threw up, developed hives, and screamed the entire way.  Seriously.)