To all our friends and family: Thank you for your thoughts and prayers, we made it HOME! We are all in one piece, though our bodies think we are in two different places!
The flight was a blessing! I held Chloe in my seat for the first hour, then she started to show signs of being sleepy (it was 11:00 pm China time!), so we made Estee's seat into a bed (thank goodness for all those American Airlines Points!!), laid her down, gave her the bottle, buckled the seatbelt around her little body, then crossed our fingers... She was out in 5 minutes! She and Estee fit perfectly on either end of the bed. Then, Stacey and I (and Estee) were able to sleep! She awoke about an hour and a half before landing, so, of course we fed her (it'd be a pretty big mountain that separated her from a meal!), and she really never cried the WHOLE FLIGHT!!
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Chloe, hanging at Dad's seat, with her favorite book
(thanks to Auntie Melissa for the animal book) |
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| Estee with a brave smile (she had a 102 fever mid-flight!) |
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| The view over Alaska |
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| What a great fit! Chloe & Estee sleeping |
After clearing customs and immigration (Chloe traveled on a Chinese passport), what a great sight to see Zach and Emily waiting for us! Thank GOD for kids who drive (and of course, thank you Zach)! Neither of us would have been up for the 2 hr drive home from LAX.
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Sight for sore eyes! (they even brought Cheerios for
Chloe, and Starbucks for us) |
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| Estee had her biggest smile for big sis! |
Chloe cried a little bit being confined to a carseat, did I mention that no one wears seatbelts in China? But with a little coaxing from Honey Nut Cheerios, she was fine, and even slept thru half of the drive.
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My own tub of Cheerios, awesome,
buckled into a carseat, not so much... |
Getting to the house was bitter-sweet, sweet because it is HOME, and visions of MY bed filled my head, and my Ugg slippers looked ohh so good!, bitter because we saw how much stuff we had to do... The BOX of mail, all the suitcases full of laundry, etc... But we ate some left-over pizza and put Chloe down, then went to bed!! We all slept fitfully (it was daytime in China), but the bright spot was Chloe went to sleep in her own crib very easily! Well... she woke up crying at 2:00 am, and guess who got to climb the stairs to figure out what to do? You guessed it, the baby daddy, yours truly! The good news was, she stopped crying as soon as she saw me, the bad news was, she was wide awake! She just stared at me, eyes wide open, not moving, until I tried to leave the room, when she started to cry (I only tried about 5 times), then I laid on the floor with Estee's stuffed animal as a pillow and waited her out. About 3:30 am I heard her snore, but gosh darn that creaky floor as I tried to leave the room, thankfully she didn't wake up, and slept till about 9:00 in the morning!
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| Rockin the cool cap Emily knit for me! |
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Exploring her new house
(photo creds - Emily) |
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| not used to sharing... yet! |
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First time on a bike, and already on the throttle...
...is this her personality showing? |
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| You want me to eat WHAT?! |
Chloe was fun to watch, exploring the house (and the TOYS!) bonding with her older siblings, and generally being a crack up. She has a very clear personality, and she will be an adventurer for sure, and smart as a whip, already doing sign language and some english words, she knows her name, and comes when called!
I know it is evening as I write this, but it took awhile before I felt halfway human again! Stacey and I slept pretty good... at least half the night. We both woke up around 8:00 and asked Google what the best cure for jet lag was, (thanks to the iPhone we didn't have to get out of bed for this).
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Her new favorite toy, it moves AND
makes music (thanks Grandma Sheila!) |
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| "I think I'm gonna like this place" |
Special thank you to Grandma Barbara (Musgrove) who took our shopping list, and bought us the groceries we needed, then came and did all our dirty laundry and helped put things away! She even watched over things while we all napped this afternoon!
So at the end of the day now, Chloe just went down for bedtime without a hitch! ...we are crossing our fingers it is for the whole night
Check back with this blog every now and then, as I will post updates on Chloe's progress in assimilating into our family! Good night...
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