Flashback: Planning a European Itinerary

The process for adopting a child from Russia involves a 10 day waiting period, which occurs immediately after the Court approves the adoption. The waiting period is in place so that the adopting family can have one last chance to change their minds before traveling home with their newly adopted child. Of course, considering that the entire adoption process itself can take up to two years, and involves two trips to Russia, by that point the waiting period seems a little bit silly.

That said, I am probably one of the few people in this position who think “Woo-hoo, I love the waiting period...a 10 day vacation! Where should we go?”. When we adopted our first boy, Xander, this vacation was truly our last hurrah. One more time to play on our own before we begin the lifelong journey of raising a child. On that trip, we chose to go to St. Petersburg and Prague. It was an absolutely phenomenal trip. Thank goodness for those waiting periods.

This time around, when we were adopting Caleb, we had Xander with us. This meant that I had to think about how to plan the 10 day vacation with a 3 year old in tow. There were definitely some immediate considerations: Whereas with the St. Petersburg and Prague trip, where we decided on an itinerary with multiple destinations for flying, we wanted to keep the travel itinerary very simple this time around. We also thought about eliminating air travel altogether and traveling to Solchi. Solchi is three hours away from Stavropol, home to the 2014 Winter Olympics, and a beautiful destination along the Black Sea. We were implored not to do this however, particularly while traveling on our own with a 3 old boy. We were told it wasn’t safe, and we listened. In fact, not long after we left, Russia had invaded Georgia not too far from there.

With that, my criteria points were:

• A location where we could feel very safe
• A location that was very kid-friendly, with lots of parks
• A location that was a short distance by plane from Moscow.
• A location that could be traveled nonstop from Russia
• A location that was inexpensive
  

The field was very quickly narrowed down to two viable options: We could either fly to Vienna to tour around Austria, or we could head to Finland. The trip to Finland may have included a day trip to Estonia, and then certainly would have involved another visit to St. Petersburg.

In the end, the logistics of a trip to Vienna, especially when coming in to Moscow from Stavropol, proved to be far more convenient. I also had remembered from previous visits to Austria that it was extremely kid-friendly. After all, Salzburg and the Lakes District are Sound of Music country.

The next step was to plan the detailed itinerary. I am perfectly ok with winging it, when traveling on my own, but when traveling with a family, we wanted to have all of the specifics in place. The entire family loves trains (in case you couldn’t tell), and so I had no qualms with setting up plenty of train travel. But here’s where I had to edit: I had wanted to visit Slovenia for a long time, and felt it wouldn’t be too far out of the way to add Ljubljana and possibly Bled to the itinerary. Again, traveling with just Kate and me, it would have been fine, but with the three of us, trying to fit in Slovenia along with Austrian destinations would have been too much.

So, we settled on an itinerary that involved flying into Vienna, taking the train to Salzburg, heading south to the Lakes District, and then back to Vienna. This meant spending a couple of extra days in Vienna to simplify the itinerary, but this turned out to be a great choice. When it was time to head back to Russia and complete the adoption of Caleb, we were all rested and relaxed.

Flashback: Leash Law

Until Xander was 38 months he was a runner. Anytime we went out in public he refused to hold your hand, and would run away at the first chance ... laughing with glee.

Of course planning a 23 day trip in Europe and Russia scared me to death. I just pictured him getting lost at the airport, a train station, or worse running into traffic and getting smashed like a pancake.

So what did I do? What every self respecting modern mother would do... I posted my question to mothers groups. I got advice like, "you need to be firm," "don't go out in public until he'll hold your hand," "was your son breastfed?"

The adoption boards weren't much more help. "It could be a sensory integration disorder, have you had him evaluated for Early Intervention?" "I would never take a three year old on a 23 day trip in Europe and Russia, don't you have family that can babysit?"

Finally, I found a conversation about using a leash. What to do? I'm opposed to putting a leash on a child ... aren't I?

So I started researching leashes. Target sells the Eddie Bauer Harness Buddy. See in the land of child leashes they aren't called leashes, they are called harnesses. It is a cute stuffed animal backpack with a tail. The tail is the leash. So I went out and bought one. The little monkey.  We tried it at home, and Xander  really liked it.

Our mistake, we didn't try it out in public. In fact, the first time we tried it out was at the airport, and it was a disaster.  Our little Xander was an indiscriminate runner. At dinner Xander made a bee line for the people mover, Jonathan instinctively grabbed the leash, and Xander's flew backwards onto his back, cracking his head on the floor. The whole world turned and stared.

At that moment I should have thrown the little buddy out, but I didn't. We carried it for 23 days, and never used it. Instead, we strapped Xander into his stroller. The stroller is a miraculous device, it is fool proof in stopping the runner. We did go to lot's of parks to run our wee one, but we never used the leash again.

So, is the leash a bad idea. If you have an enthusiastic runner it is. Especially if they exert any force in their run. If you have a gentle wanderer who just needs to be guided back then it probably is okay. Folks swear by their leash ... but the only cure that I found to the runner is time.

Shortly after we returned home our 38 month old held our hands when we walked in public and stopped running away.