Home!

We made it! Not that there was any doubt but I was pretty exhausted even before the trip started.

Troy did fine on the flight from Hanoi to Taipei, having taken a good nap at the Hanoi airport. He did not sleep on the plane but was content enough and it was great that EVA gave us a bulkhead seat with an empty seat adjacent. Here we are:



My travel group split up in Taiwan, with the others headed to San Francisco and Troy and me headed to Los Angles. The connection was only about two hours - the perfect amount of time. Here's my group and the babies. From left to right it's Kyle, Kari, Brendan, me, Troy, Jamie, Victor, and Madison.



The next flight was a bit tough, at least at first. It was wonderful that I had the entire center bulkhead section (3 seats) and the bassinet on the wall in front of me. However, Troy was overtired. I spent close to 3 hours trying to get him to sleep, walking up and down the aisles of the plane with and without the Ergo carrier, as my meal slowly got cold. Eventually, I put Troy on the floor to play, ate, and then lay him down in the carrier and zipped it shut. He was unhappy but he was not overly loud about it. Before long, he drifted off to a fitful 7 hours of sleep, allowing me the same. So, all in all, it was a pretty good journey, given the possibilities when traveling with babies. There was no screaming fit, no problems with air pressure, no diaper blowouts, and no projectile vomiting. Here we are just after landing - right before we learned that immigration was completely shut down because the computers were down:



All I can say is that I was lucky to have Troy with me. An agent took pity with me and took me around the huge unmoving line of people directly to the special processing desk for immigrants. There, they processed Troy's I600 visa (and my passport) in barely enough time for me to change Troy's diaper. We grabbed the bags and were out the door to a small group of friends and family, including impatient brother, Evan.

I swear Evan grew while I was gone. He seems to have turned from toddler to kid in my absence, and he weighs a ton (or so it seemed when he insisted on me carrying him).

Evan really did his best with Troy and he'll be a wonderful big brother. Of course, there were several meltdowns over the course of the evening, but that is to be expected (and was not helped by Evan having missed his nap to be at the airport). Here's Evan giving Troy his first bottle:



The difficulty sleeping on the plans seems to have helped with the jet-lag adjustment. I let Troy have a brief nap in the afternoon then put him down for good at about 8:30 in the crib in Evan's room. Troy woke up crying a few times but I was able to get him down each time until about 2:00. We were up for about an hour and Troy got a bottle. Troy slept the rest of the night with me, soundly, finally waking up around 8:00 pretty much his normal self. I felt a heck of a lot better too.

Only 18 years to go!