We had a great time at my dad’s. Poppy and “Papa” really bonded this time, I think.

But.

It’s so good to be home. To my own bed and my own shower and my Rockford.

Yesterday was a very long day. We left Detroit about half an hour late. It was a very quick jaunt to Chicago, but the flight still worried me. Poppy was very wriggly, and the Chicago-Raleigh flight was going to be almost two hours. In Chicago, Poppy was (amazingly) content to ride around the concourse in her stroller for the whole layover. I wanted to stop by the Ben & Jerry’s store, but the line was pretty long and I didn’t think Pi would stand for being still for that long. So we walked on by.

The flight from Chicago also left late, this time because we were waiting for people connecting from another flight. I know I would have been grateful if I’d been the one rushing for the flight, but as the one sitting on the plane with a restless toddler? Not so much. But a very nice lady sat next to us, on the other end of a three-seat row, and she played with Poppy for nearly the whole flight. I’m marking her down as a blessing.

And then there was another blessing: Poppy’s face when she spotted her daddy. She looked a little confused at first; our little napless wonder was so tired. She saw him, and she said, “Daddy?” And then she said, “Daddy! Daddy!” And it was like I wasn’t even there for the rest of the night. It was lovely.

So lovely, in fact, that it hardly phased me at all when I was standing and standing and standing at the baggage-claim carousel and watching the luggage go by and standing and standing until the conveyer belt stopped. There was still a crowd of us there, and we just stood there for a minute, waiting for it to start again. There were too many of us there. There had to be more bags.

However. There were not. They were all done.

The airline lost all of our bags.