The Pickle Jar in Poland: So, we moved to Poland

Remember in my last couple of posts I mentioned that a lot had been going on and I had a lot to update? Well, most of you, my very small readership, know that meant we found out the last day of February that Charles' next assignment would take us to Poland. Yes, POLAND. And, here we are. It has been a loooong few weeks since that hilariously shocking day, and on Wednesday, 15 July, we flew out of Atlanta and arrived the following afternoon in Szczecin, Poland, our new city for the next 2-3 years.

(EDIT: Photos are at the bottom. New computer, a baby that woke up, etc. made adding photos difficult so I'm just adding them at the bottom, so if you get bored reading, scroll down!)

Since I have recounted parts of the trip multiple times today, I thought I'd answer a few FAQs here for you all. Feel free to follow up with questions. :) Or feel free to ignore most of this, but for those of you like details (hi Mom!), read on...

1. How was the flight? How was going through customs?

We flew out of Atlanta at 4:10 pm in the afternoon EDT. We had 4 seats together in the middle of the plane. We flew Lufthansa, a first for me, though not for Charles, and it was quite nice. Each seat had a screen, as most longer flights do these days, so each of us had a plethora of movies and shows to choose from. Emmy enjoyed watching Home. I watched the latest Avengers movie over the course of several painful hours...Because the flight was ok.
The whole trip was not as bad as it could have been, and most of it was not the stuff from my nightmares, but...getting a baby to sleep on a plane with like 5 other crying babies, tons of SCREENS to distract him (he loves to look at TVs, computers, etc.), and other strange noises is not easy. He did sleep in his car seat after take off for about an hour or more. He woke up just as they were bringing food around so that meant I got to eat one handed holding a baby in one arm perched against his car seat. A baby who grunts a lot when food does not get into his mouth fast enough. Matthew thought the dinner was quite tasty. It was SO much fun! (Please note the sarcasm.)
After dinner (a choice of chicken and mashed potatoes or pasta) when I did try to settle him back down, many times over the next couple of hours one of us would have him almost asleep and something would happen to distract him and then we'd have to start all over. Walking him around was difficult, and when you did, there were lots of other screens to look at, fun!
Speaking of screens, he loved to touch mine...every time you touch it, it turns on, so I would turn it off, he'd turn it back on. Fun game! Eventually Charles managed to get him to sleep and handed him to me and we got him in his car seat. But the car seat did not recline as much as it usually does so his head tipped forward and when he shifted, he'd almost wake himself. So I did not sleep much because I was constantly adjusting the pillow to try and keep him asleep and eventually he just slept in my arms. I'm sure that flying in a car seat is the safest thing for a baby, but frankly it was almost completely pointless. Sorry car seat advocates and Car Seats for the Littles (a great site about car seats and car seat safety). When you are trying to keep the baby from screaming his or her head off, well, you do what you gotta do. Some people may not mind being hated by the entire plane, but since there were other babies that I was hating because they woke mine up, yeah, I'm not one of those people.
My "sleeping" caused me to miss breakfast (seriously, I barely slept more than maybe 20 min at a time, how did I manage to miss this? ) but I did wake up enough to pass him off to Charles and get myself to the bathroom, then wake Matthew up for a diaper change before we landed. I feared disaster if I did not since he badly needed a diaper change when we arrived at the Atlanta airport in the first place (there was no place to change him at lunch and it was so hot I did not want to do it in the car, big mistake) and a super saturated diaper plus a dirty diaper means I was changing a diaper on the floor of the international terminal by the business class check in line. Fortunately no one was in line.
But I digress, so we landed uneventfully in Frankfurt, Germany at about 7:15 am local time. By now Matthew was in a GREAT mood (seriously)! Because Charles and I were both on separate aisles, he took Emmy and the car seat and the dog and went up one aisle and I went with Matthew and several bags up the other. I waited just as I got off the plane for them, worried that he had so much stuff (the car seat was heavy) that we'd need to quickly regroup. And I waited, and waited, and waited. And then I walked on up because someone said there were 2 exits to the plane (huh? I still couldn't figure that one out) so I came to a landing where you had to go up stairs or wait on an elevator. I waited a couple more minutes, then went up the stairs and waited at the gate. And waited and waited. I was getting a tiny bit panicky and asked a flight attendant and she said a few people were still waiting on the elevator. Suddenly, there they were coming down the hall calling my name. He'd gotten on off and also waited and waited and finally took off looking for me. Word to the wise: never leave the gate area and always agree that you'll just meet at the gate. Ugh. I've never taken an international flight that dumped you into the terminal, they almost always have a hall that takes you directly to immigration, so this was a new one for me in a lot of ways.
So one we were together again, we hustled back down the terminal towards passport control, which led us to the next terminal where our flight to Berlin was boarding. Miraculously, once through passport control no one (literally no one) was standing in the customs area, so we passed on through. Some of you know, my nightmares were mostly about trying to get all of us quickly through customs with all our bags. In the US, when you land in the airport and still have another flight, you still have to get all your bags and go through customs, then recheck them. But here, no! Not only was there no one to stop us, we just had our carry-ons! That was enough to have to deal with, trust me, getting the 9 checked bags, oh man, I just can't even.
We made it to the gate of our next flight to Berlin (in the very warm airport, I might add) with relative ease, a huge, huge relief. We only had a little over an hour before the next one, so we'd been a little worried and we'd just tried to have faith it would work out, and it did. Charles refilled water bottles and I went on a hunt to find a place to change Matthew (PSA, European bathrooms thus far do not have changing tables) and I did eventually find a designated baby room for this. By the time I got back to the gate, they were starting to board. We did not hear them call families with children first, but a nice lady saw our sideshow standing there and called us on up to board. Matthew was almost asleep again in the wrap, so I wore him on the flight and his car seat just sat empty in its seat. He slept most of the way of the 45 min flight until the very end when a stupid flight attendant made me open the window shade, which streamed sunlight into his face, and also "buckle" him in (they have this buckle attachment that goes on my belt) and I had to wake him up to do it properly. Seriously, he was probably safer in the wrap because he was screaming so much I took him out of the wrap, unbuckling him in the process, and let him nurse to land. Again, sorry car seat safety advocates.
Once deplaned in Berlin, we waited hardly anytime before all 10 checked items were off (9 bags and Emmy's new booster in it's original box, car seat safety folks). Charles got them all on a couple of carts and I pushed one and carried Matthew in the wrap and Rags in her carrier while Charles pushed the other and pulled another suitcase with the car seat strapped to it, and Emmy pulled the final suitcase. Seriously, so many people just started at us. We were a sideshow! Haha. We did have to pass through "customs" again but there was just a lady sitting there and no real place to stop us, so I guess she just made sure no one looked sketchy? Who knows.

2. How did Rags do?

She did well, she barked a couple of times about halfway through the long flight. Charles took her to the bathroom and got her out and gave her a puddle pad. She did not use it, just seems she wanted to be held and she was quiet after that. In Frankfurt at the gate for our Berlin flight I let her out and gave her more water and a chance to use the puddle pad, but again she was not interested. She finally went potty once we were finally outside in Berlin. Which all proves that all her "accidents" are just "intentionals". She can hold it, she just gets mad when ignored. The calming treats we bought her seem to be helping.

3. Back to "how the kids did..." and our drive to Szczecin:

It took awhile to find our sponsor, Chris. I think he somehow thought we had 2 older children, so me with a baby threw him off. He'd brought along one of the NCOs from the unit in one of the vans the unit uses (didn't want to just say TMP for you non military folks). He took all of the checked bags in the TMP and was waiting around for another family to get in later on, and Chris took us in his car.
The drive from Berlin to Szcecin is usually pretty short, 2 hours or less, but they were doing road work so we were detoured off the highway and through the suburbs, which was pretty but full of traffic and took much longer. I was so tired and dozed during some of this drive that it's a little fuzzy, but I think it took us almost 3 hours.
Of course, that was 3 hours with 3 stops. During the flights, Emerson Elizabeth was awesome, I mean exceptionally awesome. And we are thankful. She was praised and rewarded. And then we got into the car with Chris and pretty quickly, she fell asleep. And then she woke up and needed a potty break. Fair enough, Chris has kids, he gets it, so we stopped. And back on the road, that's when she got whiny. The lack of sleep and the fact that for her body it was the middle of the night caught up and she was so rude and ugly. She wanted to be covered up a certain way. And she whined about it. And woke her brother up in the process. Ugh. We both wanted to strangle her. Fortunately you know that when you have kids and other people's act up like yours do you smirk because you are glad it is not you threatening through gritted teeth, so Chris was very nice about it, but man she was obnoxious and there were 2 more stops to attempt to fix her blanket in an acceptable manner.
Finally, we entered Poland and Szczecin. Our city is right on the German border so by the time we got to Poland we were almost there!

4. What is the time difference?

We are 6 hours ahead of the Eastern Time Zone. I'm not even sure that this time zone has a name, but if you're looking it up, look for Warsaw.

5. How is the hotel? How is your room? How long will you be in the hotel?

The hotel is good, it is quite nice. It is near the city center, there is plenty that is walking distance from us (which is good because our car is still on a boat). We have 2 rooms that are adjoining, and one is the handicapped accessible room, so it is even larger. It is a bit of a mess and we need to unpack more. We will be here at least a couple of weeks, our lease starts 1 August, plus our realtor is out of town until week after next. Also, our unaccompanied bags do not arrive for several days.

6. How did everyone sleep?

As previously mentioned, by the drive here I was practically a zombie. I could barely stay awake once I dozed off in the car. Once we arrived at the hotel at around 2 pm local time, we had to wait about 40 minutes for our rooms to be ready. By the time we got everyone in here and settled, I nursed Matthew and he and I dozed on the bed. Charles started to fall asleep and then though better of himself. Emmy watched cartoons in Polish. We were waiting for our bags to be delivered around 5 pm, but by 5:30 they were turning into pumpkins, so we went down to eat supper in the hotel restaurant. Matthew fell asleep in his high chair. We got the kids both in bed by about 7:30, then we were in bed shortly after 8 pm.
Around 11:15, Matthew woke up. I thought he just wanted to eat, but no, he wanted to PARTY. In fairness, this was about supper time for his body. He nursed, had a bottle, then stood on the floor holding onto his carseat (a favorite position these days) and pulled out magazines and such I'd stuck in there. Finally sometime after 12:30 he went back to sleep. Emmy came and got in bed with us at some point, then Charles took her back to bed and fell asleep with her. He came back in when his alarm went off at 7, and promptly fell back to sleep.
We woke up at 9:27 am. He was supposed to be meeting Chris downstairs at 9. Oops! He had a message from Chris that he was running late and would arrive at 9:30, so Charles told him that was ok, he'd just woken up! While he was frantically throwing on clothes, Matthew woke up. Then Emmy woke up just after Charles left. This left me alone to take them all down while we let Rags go out, then brought her up and made it to breakfast after 10 (it ends at 10). Emmy melted down when I told her we had missed breakfast so we ran back down and they had not started putting it away so we managed to get to eat there. Matthew went back down awhile later and took a looong nap. Like over 3 hours, I finally woke him up. During that time I dozed again (apparently the time change with kids is a lot harder than I remember it being in my younger, childless days) and Emmy complained about the Sound of Music on TV being dubbed in Polish and me not letting her eat a granola bar in my bed. The usual.
The kids are in bed tonight and we are going to be soon. Pray for a good night's rest and that we can all adjust a bit. I'm still feeling rather zombie-like.

7. Wait, Charles had to go to work?

Yes! He had to go sign in and start some of the many pieces of paperwork, etc. that need to be done. No time to waste! He said he met several different members of the U.S. contingency, and the new person in charge of our support element seems to be great, so that is good news! He got back here around 2:15 pm and dropped off a box of things our first sponsors had left for us, then ran back downstairs and Chris took him to get our cell phones squared away.

8. Which brings me to, phones and communication! How can you talk to us, you ask?

We now have Polish cell phone numbers. We did take our U.S. cell phones with us, our accounts are suspended and whenever we come back to visit, or when we return for good, they can be reactivated with our old numbers. So save those! We were able to swap out the SIM card for one with our carrier over here, so I now feel a lot better having a way to communicate with Charles when he's gone and with other people here. You can call us on them, and we'll be glad to give you, but once we are in our house we do plan to have a plan that will allow us to call the U.S. much cheaper.
We both are using an app called Whatsapp (https://www.whatsapp.com/) that you can download to your phone, it allows us to text for free and we can even make calls through that. Use our email addresses to find us. I talked to my mom today, it was not a great connection but it does work in a pinch. We can also Skype and Facetime! My friend Jocelyn and I use Whatsapp to set up phone or Skype dates and then if we are using the phone, she calls me from Germany because it is cheapest for her.

9. When do you get a house?

Well, we have a house, we just can't move in yet! Our lease is for August 1st and our retaltor is on holiday, as they say here, so we will do a walk through with her when she returns week after next. I'm not sure if we'd be able to get the key early since the 1st is a Saturday, but fingers crossed we could get the key and get our unaccompanied shipment (which has our air mattresses, Matthew's crib, linens, some kitchen stuff, toys, etc. in it) scheduled for delivery. It was sent on a plane so it should be here by the 22nd, I believe.
We have a signed a lease on the home that our original sponsors occupied (for those that don't know, we knew them from early in Charles' career, the wife was active duty and was actually in Charles' first unit and he and Angela shared an office when he joined his first unit and so I think they volunteered to be our sponsors, but they were moving back to the States this summer. Originally they were going to be here when we arrived, but their assignment changed and Steve had to be at the Pentagon much sooner so they just left Poland around the same time we arrived in the Southeast 3 weeks ago). We did a Skype tour of the house several weeks ago and decided it would work. Because the U.S. contingency has grown this summer, as have other nations' populations, housing is at more of a premium and folks we've talked to here, our sponsors included, were worried about us finding something without having to go far outside of the city.
The house is an older German style home, and should suit us fine, though I'm anxious to see it in person! It has 4 bedrooms (guest room!) and 3 bathrooms. It is quirky and European homes are just different so it will take some getting used to, but it has a lot of space and surprisingly good storage and a surprisingly good kitchen for Europe (most are super small) so I think it will work just fine. I'll share more about it when we move in. I can send you the address, if you want to see the outside of it on Google maps! It is about 3 km, just over 2 miles, from Charles office so we hope to get by with just one car, but we'll see about that.

10. Speaking of cars, how will you get around?

My car is on a boat. We shipped it from Dallas the first of June, but unfortunately it is not scheduled to be delivered until later in August, I think by the 10th. Not sure how long we can last without a car, but we'll see!

11. How can we send you mail?

We have an APO so you can send mail, just like you did when Charles was deployed. You have to use the post office, so packages must be mailed Priority Mail and complete a customs form, plus we have size limits and things may take awhile to get here, but it can be done! I will send out an email with this information, so please let me know if you don't get it.

So there is a very long, yet oh so brief, update on us. :) More to come, I promise, but for now, I have to go play the tooth fairy. Because oh yes, Emmy lost her 2nd tooth today.

Fuzzy selfie from the gate in Atlanta

Leaving on a jet plane!

This was outside the Berlin airport waiting to meet up with the folks picking us up.

I had to try and capture all our stuff. I feel better, though, knowing other people said they had a lot more. Our sponsor said when they arrived last year with their 3 year old twins they had almost twice as much as we did.