Sittin' On Go: Monday, July 13 - Starting to settle in

It sure is nice to be home as a family of four. I think kids must get over jet lag faster than adults, because TongJie seems to be completely back to normal by now, and me and Jeff are still having a hard time sleeping at night. For the past two nights, both boys have slept in their shared room - Ezekiel in his crib, and TongJie either in his toddler bed or on the floor (he often prefers the floor, maybe because it's cooler, and sometimes will go back and forth between bed and floor a couple times in one night). Ezekiel has been waking up in the middle of the night, thinking it's time to get up. I remember TongJie doing that, too, when we first came home from China when he was a baby. Probably because when it's the middle of the night here, it's the afternoon in China, and time to wake up from naptime. It has been taking a few hours of being up with Ezekiel before we can get him to fall back asleep, so it's usually been around 3:00 or so when he's finally back in his crib sleeping. Luckily, TongJie has not been woken up by Ezekiel waking up in the middle of the night. But once me and Jeff are done getting Ezekiel back to sleep, we can't go to sleep! It's very frustrating to be laying in bed, trying to sleep, and seeing it slowly begin to get light outside, knowing that your kids will be up in a few hours and you haven't slept one wink yet. At least we've managed to get a couple hours in every night, and Jeff has taken naps while Ezekiel is napping in the afternoon. It's going much better this time around than when TongJie was a baby, so we can't complain.

We went on a short excursion in the car to the post office this morning so Ezekiel can start getting used to the car seat. He sure can cry and scream loudly! This time, though, he didn't scream quite as long as last time, so that's encouraging. He'll get used to it soon, I'm sure. We're going to try out the stroller this evening to go for a walk and TongJie can ride his bike. I'm sure Ezekiel will not be a fan of the stroller either, but he'll have to get used to it too.

The big news in TongJie's life is that he got a new train set! It all started about a year ago when we found a "Trackmaster" Thomas train set at a yard sale for I think $10, so we bought it secretly, knowing what a great deal it was, and thinking we'd give it to TongJie for his 4th birthday in September. We bought it so hurriedly that we didn't get much of a look at it until after TongJie was in his car seat and I checked it out more closely in the back. We then realized that the engines required batteries, and we were a little disappointed, because TongJie (at the time) was not really the kind of kid who liked to sit and let trains run around the tracks on their own - he preferred to push the trains himself. Anyway, we'd already bought it and we knew what a good deal we got, so we figured we'd just hold onto it. As luck would have it, that same day, we went to another yard sale and found ANOTHER Thomas train set, but this one was the wooden rail kind, with little magnetic wooden engines that could be pushed around the tracks. So, we secretly bought the wooden one as well, and that's the one that we ended up giving TongJie for his fourth birthday, and it's gotten lots of good use to be sure! Over the past several months, he has learned about the Trackmaster sets by seeing them in stores and stuff, and he has really been wanting one. So, before we left for China, Jeff and I decided that we would give the hidden Trackmaster set to TongJie as a surprise when we returned from our trip. We gave it to him on Saturday morning after he woke up, and he loves it so much! He has been playing with it almost constantly for the past few days, and he must have said "Mama? Daddy? Thank you for the train set!" at least 15 times on Saturday. He's such a fun kid!

The weather has been nice (not too hot, like it was here the entire time we were in China), so we've been out in our nice shaded backyard. Ezekiel seems to enjoy being outside, and we're really grateful that we have nice big shade trees so he can easily stay in the shade.

At the Hong Kong airport

The first night we got home, TongJie and I slept on our sofa bed. I was so exhausted, I didn't even put any sheets on! This is TongJie the next morning.