Made it home!

Well, we made it home after the long flight, an overnight layover in LA, a shorter flight, and a car ride!  My parents picked us up at the airport in Seattle at10:00 this morning and drove us home.  We got home around 2:00 and it is SO good to be home!  We arrived at our house to find "welcome home" balloons and a sign, groceries, and toys and clothes for TongJie.  We know that the Stromings must have lovingly placed all those things in our house because they had a key, but we suspect that others may have had a hand in it too, so thanks to whoever was so thoughtful to provide us with all the wonderful stuff!  We were especially excited to find watermelon in our refrigerator, since TongJie loves it so much.

I think TongJie probably thinks we're in another hotel or something because that's where we've always been as long as we've had him.  It will probably take some time for him to realize that this is his home and to realize what that means.  We did take him out for a walk in our new stroller from the shower and I think he enjoyed it but he's been pretty serious so it's hard to tell what he thinks.  Poor kid - his body is all mixed up from the time change, on top of the fact that he's under so much stress right now.  Since I barely got any sleep in LA and I didn't sleep in the car ride, Jeff kindly offered to entertain TongJie while I took a nap, so I took a nap for a few hours in preparation for the long night ahead.  While I was sleeping, Jeff took TongJie out for another stroller ride since he was getting pretty worked up and upset (TongJie, not Jeff!).  The stroller calmed him down and he went to sleep.  After I woke up, TongJie woke up crying so I've been carrying him around in the front pack and he's sleeping pretty soundly.  I'm sure he's going to wake up pretty soon and think it's morning because he slept a lot today, so I'll stay up with him while Jeff sleeps and then we'll trade off.  That's the plan anyway.

During the short time that TongJie has actually been awake in his new home so far, we've found that he loves to be outside, which I think will be a helpful distraction for his crying.  He also seems to like our cats and has been petting them when they come around.  He hasn't met our dog Albert yet because Albert is still with my parents.  We'll probably have Albert over for a "visit" pretty soon to see how TongJie does with him.

I don't have any pictures ready to post yet, but I'll post some tomorrow.  We did some unpacking today and some laundry and tried to get caught up on our pile of mail.  We have some more paperwork to do for Wacap and the adoption, plus medical and insurance things, so we'll need to work on that in the next couple of days as well.  Right now, it's just good to be home!  Thanks for all of your kind thoughts and prayers and messages during this trip.