Our US Citizen

We are finally home! We had a very long day yesterday. We left our hotel at 4:00 pm October 21 Us time and landed in Birmingham at 6:15 October 22. 26 hours flying with a 3 year old went very well. He slept a good bit. The main fits were during take off and landing because he did not like the seat belts. China does not require them for cars, so he is not used to being strapped in. We flew 4 hours from Guanzhou to Tokyo, had a 1 hour lay over, then 12- 13 hours to Atlanta. We talked our way into bulk head seating!!! It was great. However, our flight from Tokyo was late, so we missed our connection to Birmingham by 5 minutes. I was so tired and frustrated, I got little angry with the receptionist. In Atlanta, we went through visa check, immigration, customs, re-check baggage, and security. Then had to wait stand by for 2 flights, but we boarded the second one at 6:30 which was only 2 hours later than our original flight. The man at customs was so kind! He said I am not sending you through the baggage check line because of the baby. 

When we landed in Birmingham, Bill, Will, Elizabeth, Jim, Jami, Brooks, Linden, Laurel, Dear, Sophie, and Dionne were waiting!! Elizabeth had been at a football game, so she had on her cheer uniform and pom poms. Guang Guang started waving at everyone when he heard them cheering. When we got to our house, there were probably 50 or so people waiting for us in the street cheering!! Guang Guang started clapping. He loved the attention! He did great. He stayed in my arms for a little while, and then got down and started playing with all of the kids. He played basketball, soccer, and football in the front yard with tons of children. I will send pictures of this out later today. I need to download them. 

We ate dinner around 8:30 and put him to bed around 9:30. He slept with Bill and me because he is used to the family bed. I guess we will work on that next week. I realized that he has not seen a house before. People in China live in apartments for the most part. They are typically one or two bedroom apartments. Our house is not big, but we thought he might be scared. He woke up at 11:00 and 3:00 crying and officially woke up at 5:45-- not too bad. He woke up happy and talking to BABA, dad, for the first time. He has been playing outside with BaBa and Jie Jie (Bill and Elizabeth) this morning. He spent an hour playing in a puddle!! We will try to give another update tonight.